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THE 

PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS 

AND 

THE  MEANING  OF  METAPHYSICAL 
EXPLANATION 

AN  ESSAY  IN  DEFINITIONS 


BY 

HARTLEY  BURR  ALEXANDER,  A.  B. 


SUBMITTED   IN   PARTIAL    FULFILLMENT   OF   THE    REQUIREMENTS 

FOR  THE    DEGREE   OF   DOCTOR   OF   PHILOSOPHY 

IN   THE 

Faculty  of  Philosophy 
Columbia  University 


NEW  YORK 
June,  1902 


THE 

PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS 

AND 

THE  MEANING  OF  METAPHYSICAL 
EXPLANATION 

AN  ESSAY  IN  DEFINITIONS 


BY 

HARTLEY  BURR  ALEX ANDER,  A.  B. 


SUBMITTED  IN   PARTIAL   FULFILLMENT  OF  THE    REQUIREMENTS 

FOR  THE   DECREE   OF  DOCTOR  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

IN   THE 

Faculty  of  Philosophy 
Columbia  University 


NEW  YORK 
June,  10O2 


PREFACE. 


MOST  of  our  differences  in  matters  metaphysical  are  mis- 
understandings. We  fail  to  apprehend  one  another's  mean- 
ings, no  matter  how  strenuously  we  strive  to  speak  and  write 
with  precision,  no  matter  how  painstakingly  we  listen  and 
read.  Even  in  our  own  thinking  half  our  problems  are  due 
to  misleadings  of  the  thought's  language  or  habit.  The 
terms  we  use,  the  images,  the  abstractions  and  symbols,  tend 
ever  to  lead  us  awry;  for  each  of  these  is  compounded  of 
remnants  of  old  constructions  and  of  manners  of  thought 
long  discarded,  which  yet,  in  spite  of  us,  insidiously  enter 
into  and  weaken  the  structure  we  aim  to  build  anew. 

For  such  reason  the  essay  at  hand  is  in  the  form  of  a  study 
of  terms.  It  endeavors  to  define  our  more  elemental  meta- 
physical concepts,  and  to  show  some  shades  of  meaning 
conveyed  by  the  words  we  use,  aspects  we  might  emphasize, 
distinctions  we  should  render  clear.  But  in  this  the  author 
does  not  attempt  encyclopaedic  lexicography :  it  is  not  his 
purpose  to  give  exhaustive  definition  nor  full  historical  ex- 
position of  the  meaning  of  any  term.  It  is  only  for  method 
that  the  essay  proceeds  by  definition ;  its  purpose  is  to  out- 
line as  clearly  as  possible  the  central  problem  and  import 
of  all  metaphysic,  and  for  the  accomplishment  of  this  no 
method  is  likely  to  prove  so  fruitful  as  the  Aristotelian  study 
of  concepts.  But  in  the  work  here  given  it  must  not  be 
understood  that  there  is  any  endeavor  at  metaphysical  con- 
struction. In  all  ways  effort  has  been  directed  to  the  avoid- 
ance of  this.  Necessarily  even  in  outlining  the  problem 
something    of   bias,   some    inkling    of    a    favorite    mode    of 

5]  i  5 


6  PREFACE  [6 

thought,  finds  expression ;  and  so  much  must  be  allowed  to 
the  individual  equation  in  any  man's  writing.  But  final 
solutions  remain  unattempted. 

In  this  preface  it  may  not  be  amiss  explicitly  to  state  cer- 
tain convictions  implied  in  the  thinking  here  out-wrought. 
First  there  is  a  conviction  that  metaphysic  is  not  a  science 
of  things  ultimate  in  the  cosmos,  but  of  things  ultimate  in 
human  life  and  destiny  and  ultimate  only  for  human  in- 
sight; that  consequently,  metaphysical  solutions  must 
change  as  the  human  outlook  changes,  and  that  the  way  of 
our  thought  must  develop  as  our  powers  of  intuition  become 
enlarged.  No  final  metaphysical  solution  is  possible,  because 
so  long  as  human  intelligence  broadens  metaphysical  truth 
must  alter.  It  is  not  independent  nor  static,  but  exists  for 
knowledge  alone. 

That  there  is  need  to-day  of  a  new  metaphysic,  a  new 
vision  of  man's  destiny,  a  new  and  virile  exaltation  of  his 
ideals, — this,  too,  is  a  conviction  underlying  these  writings. 
But  the  time  for  the  great  work  is  not  yet.  First  must  be 
written,  as  unmistakably  as  the  century  past  has  written  the 
body's  genesis,  the  genesis  and  evolution  of  the  mind.  To 
this  task  the  natural  sciences  and  the  science  of  history,  the 
varied  branches  of  anthropology,  psychology,  philosophy  in 
its  manifold  fields,  all  must  contribute.  And  when  the  task 
is  performed,  or  even  in  large  part  performed,  forth  shall  arise 
the  new  synthesis,  the  new  world-vision,  and  it  shall  be  in- 
evitable in  its  inspiration.  But  before  that  day  we  who  hope 
for  the  advent  must  cleanse  and  order  our  house  of  thought, 
we  must  come  to  an  understanding  with  ourselves  and 
achieve  some  sane  understanding  of  the  metaphysic  where- 
with we  were  born.  It  is  for  the  furthering  of  this  humbler, 
but  not  unessential  end,  that  this  essay  was  written. 

May  g,  1902. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 


THE   DESIRE   TO    KNOW 

i.  Types  of  speculative  interest 9 

2.  Need  the  rationale  of  curiosity 1 1 

3.  The  nature  and  aim  of  metaphysical  interest 13 

CHAPTER    II 

THE    MEANING   OF    KNOWLEDGE 

4.  The  term  '  Knowledge  ' 16 

5.  Its  psychical  import 16 

6.  Its  applied  meanings  .....        18 

7.  Representative  knowledge  and  thought  symbolism      ...  23 

8.  Intelligibility.     Resume      27 

CHAPTER  III 

THE   OBJECT   OF   KNOWLEDGE 

9.  The  object  of  knowledge  is  reality 39 

10.  Historical  meanings  of  reality 32 

11.  Mr.  Bradley's  conception  of  reality 35 

12.  Mr.  Bradley's  conception  criticised 4° 

13.  Danger  in  dialectic 45 

CHAPTER  IV 

EXPLANATION   AND   DESCRIPTION 

14.  Explanation  and  description  defined 4* 

15.  The  self-explanatory 47 

16.  Pan-psychism  and  the  existence  of  the  ultra-experiential   .  4$ 

17.  Ideal  construction  and  its  limitation 52 

18.  Identical  and  causal  equivalency 5^ 

7]  » 


8                                                   CONTENTS  [g 
CHAPTER  V 

MCI 

THE   PRINCIPLE   OF   IDENTITY 

19.  The  self-identical     .        59 

20.  Monism  and  the  subject 59 

11.  Types  of  unity  and  unit 64 

22.  The  concept  of  measure 68 

23.  Metaphysical  implications  of  physical  measurements  ...  70 

24.  Types  of  sameness  and  the  use  of  universals 75 

25.  Hypostatization  of  universals.     Resume 78 

CHAPTER  VI 

THE   PRINCIPLE   OF    CAUSALITY 

26.  Causality  implies  necessary  sequence 82 

27.  Aristotle's  doctrine  of  causation 84 

28.  Causa  efficiens  and  causa  occasionalis 86 

29.  Causa  immanens 91 

30.  Review.     Conceivability  of  cause 95 

CHAPTER  VII 

THE   PRINCIPLE   OF   SUFFICIENT   REASON 

31.  Nature  of  sufficient  reason 98 

32.  Real  significance  of  the  ontological  question 101 

33.  Necessary  implicates  of  rationality 103 

34.  Cosmical  intelligibility  implies  teleology 107 

35.  Some  forms  of  world  explanation 109 

CHAPTER   VIII 

TRUTH    AND    ITS    CRITERIA 

36.  Meaning  of  the  need  for  metaphysical  truth 1T3 

37.  Meaning  of  truth 116 

38.  Professor  Royce's  argument  from  error 119 

39.  The  criteria  of  truth 123 

40.  Mr.  Bradley's  use  of  the  law  of  contradiction 125 

41.  The  ultimate  criterion  our  conceptual  impotence    ....  126 

42.  Conclusion 127 


CHAPTER  I 


THE   DESIRE   TO    KNOW 


I.  Our  speculative  curiosity  about  the  world  is  commonly 
conceived  to  be  of  more  than  one  type.  It  varies  in  form 
and  mood,  and  according  to  these  variations  is  differently 
designated.  There  is,  first,  the  mere  curiosity  to  know,  the 
desire  for  knowledge  for  its  own  sake,  as  we  say.  And  this 
we  speak  of  as  either  a  metaphysical  and  wholly  speculative 
interest  in  the  ultimate  nature  of  things,  or,  where  the  con- 
crete and  the  fact  appeal  most  to  us,  as  a  purely  scientific 
interest.  To  be  sure  the  two  types  of  interest  go  hand  in 
hand,  or  rather  the  effort  to  satisfy  either  one  is  bound  to 
lead  to  the  range  of  speculation  pre-empted  by  the  other. 
The  effort  fully  to  explain  the  concrete  fact  lures  the  scien- 
tist inevitably  into  the  metaphysical  shadow-land  ;  the  effort 
to  understand  in  universals  and  totalities  compels  the  meta- 
physician just  as  inevitably  to  verify,  exemplify  and  incarnate 
his  abstractions  in  the  facts.  For  the  scientist  the  first  curi- 
osity is  about  phenomena,  for  the  metaphysician  about 
essences;  but  the  complete  satisfaction  of  either  interest 
must  be  identical  with  that  of  the  other.  Only  in  point  of 
departure  do  they  differ. 

But  it  is  not  alone  the  scientific  or  the  metaphysical  in- 
terest that  leads  to  speculation.  There  is  a  third  type, 
which  is  never  mere  curiosity  nor  purely  speculative.  This 
is  our  human  interest  in  the  world.  It  is  a  lively  and  per- 
sonal concern  for  knowledge  that  may  serve  human  welfare 
and  reveal  human  destiny.  When  this  interest  is  merely 
and  immediately  utilitarian  we  call  it  practical  interest  in 
9]  9 


I0  THE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  [IO 

facts  and  things,  but  when  it  springs  from  a  deep  unrest  that 
forgets  the  immediate,  and  will  content  itself  only  with  read- 
ings of  the  riddles  of  fate,  it  becomes,  in  a  larger  sense,  a 
human  interest.  It  makes  no  talk  of  knowledge  for  the  sake 
of  knowledge  ;  it  feels  no  abashment  in  the  face  of  immutable 
fact.  Instead,  it  desires  knowledge  that  may  avail  human 
need,  and  iterately  demands  the  meaning  of  Nature  for  man. 

It  is,  then,  in  mood  rather  than  in  object  that  the  human 
interest  differs  from  purely  speculative  curiosity.  It  is  never 
impartial  and  impersonal.  It  is  an  anxious  interest,  with 
desires  and  aspirations  for  which  it  hopes  to  find  a  reason 
and  a  satisfaction  in  the  nature  of  things.  In  short,  it  feels 
the  legitimacy  of  the  more  intimate  requirements  of  the 
human  soul,  and  the  urgency  of  these  as  well  as  of  intellec- 
tual needs.  This,  I  take  it,  is  what  Professor  James  contends 
for  in  that  eloquent  plea  for  the  rationality  of  faith,  The  Will 
to  Believe?  It  is  the  determining  influence  upon  our  beliefs 
of  our  "  passional  nature  " — our  desires,  faiths  and  hopes — 
which  he  wishes  to  assert,  and  the  just  warrant  for  such 
determination  which  he  wishes  to  defend. 

Let  it  not  be  understood  that  because  the  human  interest 
•springs  from  other  needs  than  the  intellectual,  this  need  must 
yield  to  them  its  pre-eminence.  It  may  be  only  a  matter  of 
psychical  constitution,  only  a  psychical  necessity,  but  with 
most  of  us  the  final  determination  of  belief  must  rest  with 
the  intellect.  Faith  cannot  hold  against  our  better  judg- 
ment. But  the  kind  of  interest  that  we  most  feel  can  deter- 
mine what  problems  we  shall  study.  And  wherever  there 
is  what  Professor  James  calls  "  a  genuine  option,"  wherever 
the  choice  of  propositions  is  indifferent  to  the  intellect,  "our 
passional  nature  not  only  may,  but  must,  decide"  (p.  n). 
Or,  as  he  elsewhere  says :  "  Of  two  conceptions  equally  fit 

1  The  Will  to  Believe  and  Other  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy  (Longmans, 
Gtttn  &  Co.,  1897). 


I  !  J  THE  DESIRE   TO  KNO  W  l  r 

to  satisfy  the  logical  demand,  that  one  which  awakens  the 
active  impulses  or  satisfies  other  aesthetic  demands  better 
than  the  other,  will  be  accounted  the  more  rational  concep- 
tion, and  will  deservedly  prevail"  (p.  76).  Finally,  the 
measure  of  explanation  adequate  to  the  impersonal  needs  of 
the  intellect,  yet  failing  to  satisfy  our  more  vital  concerns, 
may  be  supplemented,  and  ought  to  be  supplemented,  by 
explanations  that  will  quiet  these  concerns,  always  provided 
we  do  not  affront  that  consistency  of  thought  which  is  the 
norm  and  token  of  our  sanity. 

2.  Interest  of  any  type,  considered  with  reference  to  itself 
alone,  is  a  psychical  phenomenon.  And  the  satisfaction  of 
it  must  also  be  psychical.  A  satisfying  explanation,  in  this 
light,  can  have  only  psychical  validity  ;  that  is,  unless  it  satis- 
fies mental  need,  it  is  worth  nothing.  This  is  true  of  the 
ratiocinative  responses  to  our  impersonal  speculations  just 
as  surely  as  of  knowledge  by  faith.  If  we  have  a  truth  of 
which  we  are  satisfied,  we  do  not  pretend  to  go  beyond  the 
feeling  of  certitude  in  our  own  minds  for  warrant  of  its  genu- 
ineness.    We  have  all  that  our  interest  can  demand. 

Yet  while  every  operation  of  the  mind  must  be  psychical 
in  this  broad  sense  and  every  final  validity  a  psychical 
validity,  there  is  no  less  reason  for  rational  explanation,  just 
as  there  is  no  less  absolute  dependence  of  all  other  explana- 
tion and  satisfaction  upon  the  rational.  Only  the  reason 
does  not  lie  in  the  interest  or  curiosity  itself,  either  as  mere 
desire  to  know  or  as  emotional  yearning  for  truth,  but 
rather  in  the  organic  need  which  gives  rise  to  these  and  in 
the  biological  function  which  they  subserve.  The  reason 
for  our  impulsive  curbsity  about  the  world  must  be  sought 
in  the  history  of  the  mind's  action  and  the  mind's  need ; 
and  the  meaning  and  necessity  and  worth  of  each  type  of 
interest  that  we  feel  and  each  kind  of  satisfaction  that  we 
require  must  be  read  in  terms  of  organic  reaction. 


!  2  THE  PR  OBLEM  OF  ME  TAPHYSICS  [  j  2 

To  illustrate  let  me  quote  once  more  from  Professor 
James :  "  The  utility  of  this  emotional  effect  of  expectation 
is  perfectly  obvious ;  '  natural  selection,'  in  fact,  was  bound 
to  bring  it  about  sooner  or  later.  It  is  of  the  utmost  prac- 
tical importance  to  an  animal  that  he  should  have  prevision 
of  the  qualities  of  the  objects  that  surround  him,  and  espec- 
ially that  he  should  not  come  to  rest  in  presence  of  circum- 
stances that  might  be  fraught  either  with  peril  or  advantage 
— go  to  sleep,  for  example,  on  the  brink  of  precipices,  in  the 
dens  of  enemies,  or  view  with  indifference  some  new-appear- 
ing object  that  might,  if  chased,  prove  an  important  addition 
to  the  larder.  Novelty  ought  to  irritate  him.  All  curiosity 
has  thus  a  practical  genesis.  We  need  only  look  at  the 
physiognomy  of  a  dog  or  horse  when  a  new  object  comes 
into  his  view,  his  mingled  fascination  and  fear,  to  see  that 
the  element  of  conscious  insecurity  or  perplexed  expectation 
lies  at  the  root  of  his  emotion"  (pp.  78-79). 

Perhaps  in  this  "ought"  which  impels  curiosity  in  the 
natural  world,  we  have  the  real  reason  for  that  instinctive 
interest  in  naked  fact  with  which  scientific  speculation 
begins.  However  impersonal  our  love  for  truth  may  seem, 
however  complete  an  end  in  itself  our  grasping  for  facts, 
there  yet  remains  a  reason  and  a  purpose  behind  the  con- 
scious interest — a  meaning  of  the  psychical  fact  to  be  found 
only  in  organic  need.  The  impulse  to  know  is  the  conscious 
sign  of  this  need,  just  as  irritation  at  novelty  is  its  sign  in 
the  animal.  And  the  "ought"  is  just  as  imperative  and 
significant. 

We  pass,  then,  beyond  the  given  fact  of  a  scientific 
interest  to  find  its  meaning.  Neither  its  given  psychical 
content  nor  its  objective  intent  can  give  us  its  raison  d'etre. 
For  this  we  must  look  to  its  genesis  and  to  its  biological 
function  and  attainment.  But  if  this  is  true,  the  scientific 
and  the   practical    interest  do   not  essentially   differ.     The 


,3-|  THE  DESIRE  TO  KNOW  I3 

purpose  of  each  is  utilitarian ;  to  familiarize  with  environ- 
ment, as  means  to  self-help,  is  their  common  aim.  It  is 
only  in  given  psychical  content  that  the  two  interests  vary. 
The  impulse  or  mood  of  the  pure  scientific  interest  is  mere 
curiosity — an  inexpugnable  and  insatiate  curiosity,  it  may 
be,  but  not  different  in  kind  from  the  expectant  inquisitive- 
ness  of  the  animal.  It  is  a  curiosity  that  recognizes  no  con- 
scious reason  for  itself  or  purpose  beyond  its  immediate 
satisfaction.  Its  motive  is  not  felt  nor  its  use  seen.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  practical  interest — and  this,  of  course,  in- 
cludes interest  in  ■  practical  science ' — is  distinguished  by 
the  fact  that  it  is  curious  for  a  purpose  which  it  feels  and 
understands.  Its  motive  and  its  aim  are  in  consciousness, 
and  these  constitute  a  reason  for  it  behind  which  only  a 
theoretic  interest  can  lead.  There  may  be  other  reasons  for 
it,  but  they  belong  to  a  larger  view  of  life  than  itself  implies. 

The  human  interest  is  like  the  practical,  of  which  it  is  the 
deeper  expression.  Its  reason  is  to  be  found  in  conscious 
motive  and  conscious  aim.  It  asks,  not  for  the  sake  of  ask- 
ing, nor  from  any  blind  inner  urgency,  but  from  the  no  less 
urgent  and  necessary  desire  to  read  its  own  future  and  de- 
cipher the  laws  that  govern  the  way  of  human  life.  Very 
likely  its  purpose  is  not  different  from  that  of  the  purely 
speculative  interest,  but  it  knows  this  purpose  and  it  owns 
its  motives  and  directs  its  attention  to  avowedly  personal 
ends.  Pure  speculative  curiosity  is  but  an  economy  of 
nature ;  for  where  little  will  suffice,  nature  is  not  bountiful. 
It  is  the  human  interest  denuded  of  all  its  wealth  of  motive : 
it  is  a  naked  curiosity  the  reason  for  which  is  suppressed — 
possibly  that  it  may  do  its  work  the  better.  But  when  we 
ask  after  this  reason,  we  find  that  it  is  not  other  than  human 
need. 

3.  In  extending  the  meaning  of  human  interest  to  cover 
speculative   curiosity,   in   the   broadest  sense   of   the   latter 


1 4  THE  PR  OBLEM  OF  ME  7  A  PH  YS/CS  [  {  4 

term,  I  have  included  what  was  called  the  metaphysical,  as 
well  as  the  scientific,  interest.  For  the  metaphysical  inter- 
est, too,  comes  in  response  to  human  need.  Impersonal 
and  abstruse  as  its  object  may  seem,  the  meaning  of  the 
interest  can  only  be  personal  and  vital.  f  It  searches  out  the 
uttermost  parts  of  the  universe,  but  it  searches  only  because 
of  the  possible  human  significances  that  may  lie  therein. 
And  it  desires  to  know  the  whole  of  the  universe  only  be- 
cause possibility  of  such  significances  cannot  be  exhausted 
until  the  whole  is  known. 

The  immediate  incitement  of  metaphysical  interest  is 
experience — experience  in  the  wide  meaning  Kant  gave  to 
it,  as  including  every  possible  extension  of  knowledge. 
The  metaphysician  is  concerned  with  what  is  most  remotely 
related  to  human  experience  as  well  as  with  what  is  most 
immediately  given  within  it,  but  he  is  concerned  at  all  only 
in  order  that  he  may  read  into  what  is  yours  and  what  is 
mine  its  fullest  and  richest  content.  He  analyzes  the  fluid 
of  sense  to  its  final  elements,  he  journeys  the  distances  of 
the  universe,  but  only  in  order  to  return  to  reality  more 
than  its  native  possession.  He  abstracts,  but  only  in  the 
faith  that  the  chain  of  dead  abstraction  will  lead  inevitably 
back  to  the  concrete  and  the  living.  Aristotle  was  the  first 
to  see  that  metaphysical  analysis  must  return  to  us  a  world 
as  complex,  brilliant  and  multitudinously  varied  as  that 
whole  luminous  world  the  Greek  mind  knew.  He  was  the 
first  to  feel  the  need  of  accounting  for  all  its  change  and 
seeming  as  well  as  its  stable  realities.  Kant  was  the  first  to 
tell  us  that  this  world  could  be  known  and  organized  only 
as  a  world  of  experience — as  the  world  experienced.  And 
in  the  attitudes  of  these  two  thinkers  is  defined  for  us  the 
object  of  our  metaphysical  interest. 

In  asking  what  constitutes  an  adequate  metaphysical  ex- 
planation, we  are  concerned  first  of  all  with  the  conditioning 


!5]  THE  DESIRE  TO  KNOW  I  5 

of  intellectual  satisfaction.  What  is  knowledge?  What  the 
object  of  knowledge?  The  principles  of  explanation? 
Truth?  But  we  are  also  concerned  with  the  adequacy  of 
the  explanation  to  the  totality  of  our  needs,  to  our  human 
interest ;  and  we  cannot  have  any  finally  valid  explanation 
until  all  these  needs  are  met  and  all  our  interests  satisfied. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE    MEANING   OF   KNOWLEDGE 

4.  There  is  a  question  of  real  importance  the  answer  to 
which  is  all  too  likely  to  be  taken  for  granted.  What  is  the 
meaning  of  knowledge?  What  is  it  to  know?  For  there 
are  ambiguities  in  the  use  of  the  word,  and  different  mean- 
ings and  double  meanings,  which  ought  to  be  cleared  up. 

At  first  glance  this  question  may  seem  a  little  trite — a 
bumptious  asseveration  of  the  thousand-year-old  problem  of 
all  philosophy  and  all  science.  Or,  if  the  knowing  process 
comes  to  mind,  one  may  be  referred  to  the  science  of  logic, 
whose  very  province  it  is  to  define  this  process,  or  to  the 
science  of  epistemology,  the  whole  concern  of  which  is  to 
discover  how  knowledge  can  be,  or  to  psychology,  which 
analyzes  for  us  our  perceptions  and  ratiocinations.  But  any 
such  reference  would  be  based  upon  misunderstanding  of  a 
more  modest  purpose.  For  the  question  is  not  meant  to  be 
how  we  know,  nor  how  we  can  know,  nor  why,  nor  yet  what 
is  the  content  of  our  knowledge,  but  only  in  what  different 
senses  do  we  use  the  term.  That  there  are  different  senses 
I  think  no  one  accustomed  to  follow  philosophical  discus- 
sions will  deny,  and  it  goes  without  saying  that  such  differ- 
ences ought  to  be  clearly  discriminated. 

5.  Psychically,  and  apart  from  its  object  and  its  truth, 
knowing  is  nothing  more  than  a  feeling  of  certitude.  It  is 
belief  with  all  the  element  of  doubt  eliminated,  a  belief  so 
positive  as  to  preclude  the  possibility  of  any  alternative 
belief.  It  may  be  immediate  perception,  it  may  be  rational 
conviction,  it  may  be  a  naive  faith  which  has  never  ques- 

16  [16 


!7]  THE  MEANING   OF  KNOWLEDGE  ,7 

tioned ;  but  in  each  case,  if  it  is  real  knowing,  it  is  bound  to 
possess  the  hypnotic  inevitability  of  the  fixed  idea  or  of 
emotional  obsession.  It  is,  in  short,  that  necessity  for  think- 
ing real  a  sole  possibility  for  which  Mr.  Bradley  so  effectu- 
ally argues ;  x  or,  where  no  thought  is,  it  is  the  certitude  of 
mere  feeling. 

The  feeling  of  certitude  is  not  necessarily  a  feeling  of 
constraint.  It  may  be  so,  and  is  very  likely  to  be  so,  where 
the  facts  run  counter  to  our  wishes.  It  is  not  infrequently 
that  we  rebel  against  the  logical  necessity  of  judgment  when 
the  necessary  judgment  seems  cruel  to  us,  or  feel  a  sort  of 
dumb  desperation  at  the  oppressive  brutality  of  facts,  or  find 
in  the  whole  world  nothing  so  irrational  as  reason.  But 
normally  there  is  no  such  conflict  between  our  emotional 
and  cognitive  states.  Normally,  knowing  is  frictionless,  or 
even  a  kind  of  pleasure  in  itself.  It  is  rest  in  a  content  of 
knowledge  suffering  no  disagreeable  proddings  from  inquisi- 
torial alternatives. 

Professor  James  describes  this  state  in  his  ever  unapproach- 
able way : 2  "  The  transition  from  a  state  of  puzzle  and  per- 
plexity to  rational  comprehension  is  full  of  lively  relief  and 
pleasure.  But  this  relief  seems  to  be  a  negative  rather  than 
a  positive  character.  Shall  we  then  say  that  the  feeling  of 
rationality  is  constituted  merely  by  the  absence  of  any  feel- 
ing of  irrationality?  I  think  there  are  good  grounds  for 
upholding  such  a  view.  All  feeling  whatever,  in  the  light  of 
certain  recent  psychological  speculations,  seems  to  depend 
for  its  psychical  condition  not  on  simple  discharge  of  nerve- 
currents,  but  on  their  discharge  under  arrest,  impediment 
or  resistance.  Just  as  we  feel  no  particular  pleasure  when 
we  breathe  freely,  but  a  very  intense  distress  when  the  res- 
piratory motions  are  prevented,  so  any  unobstructed  ten- 

1  The  Principles  of  Logic,  book  I,  chap,  viii;   book  3,  part  2,  chap.  iii. 
1  Op.  cit.,  "  The  Sentiment  of  Rationality ;"  pp.  63-64. 


r  g  THE  PROBLEM  OF  ME  TAPHYSICS  [  i  8 

dency  to  action  discharges  itself  without  the  production  of 
much  cogitative  accompaniment,  and  any  perfectly  fluent 
cause  of  thought  awakens  but  little  feeling ;  but  when  the 
movement  is  inhibited,  or  when  the  thought  meets  with 
difficulties,  we  experience  distress.  It  is  only  when  the  dis- 
tress is  upon  us  that  we  can  be  said  to  strive,  to  crave,  or  to 
aspire.  When  enjoying  plenary  freedom,  either  in  the  way 
of  motion  or  of  thought,  we  are  in  a  sort  of  anaesthetic  state, 
in  which  we  might  say  with  Walt  Whitman,  if  we  cared  to  say 
anything  about  ourselves  at  such  times,  '  I  am  sufficient  as  I 
am.'  This  feeling  of  the  sufficiency  of  the  present  moment, 
of  its  absoluteness — this  absence  of  all  need  to  explain  it, 
account  for  it,  or  justify  it — is  what  I  cail  the  sentiment  of 
rationality.  As  soon,  in  short,  as  we  are  enabled  from  any 
cause  whatever  to  think  with  perfect  fluency,  the  thing  we 
think  of  seems  to  us  pro  tanto  rational." 

6.  In  this  sense  of  psychical  self-sufficiency  all  knowledge 
is  immediate.  It  has  the  immediacy  of  any  mental  state  or 
feeling.  But  there  is  another  sense  in  which  we  speak  of 
immediate  knowing,  and  by  which  we  intend  to  discriminate 
between  it  and  mediate  or  representative  knowing.  And 
this  is  the  discrimination  which  is  most  essential  to  clear 
philosophical  thinking.  It  is  the  distinction  between  what 
is  actually  and  what  is  symbolically  present  in  the  mind, 
between  what  we  are  aware  of  in  some  sense  or  other,  and 
what  our  thought  means  or  stands  for. 

The  primitive,  and  I  may  add,  the  ultimate  type  of  know- 
ing is  just  this  awareness  of  somewhat  which  characterizes 
immediacy.  It  is  immediate  perception,  insight,  intuition. 
Any  object  of  knowledge  which  is  present  in  experience — 
which  is  experienced,  that  is  to  say, — is  thus  known. 
Whether  the  experienced  thing  is  a  psychical  or  a  real 
thing  makes  no  difference :  in  so  far  as  it  is  experienced,  it 
is  intuited  and  actualized — that  is  what  we  mean  by  "  experi- 
encing" anything. 


19]  THE  MEANING  OF  KNOWLEDGE  IOy 

This  type  of  knowledge  asks  no  questions.  It  refers  to 
nothing  beyond  itself.  So  far  as  it  succeeds  in  winning  its 
insights,  it  is  perfectly  self-sufficient  and  satisfied.  It  is,  in 
short,  for  the  objective  aspect  of  knowing,  all  that  the  feel- 
ing of  certitude,  or  Professor  James'  "  sentiment  of  ration- 
ality," is  for  the  subjective.  And  it  differs  from  this  feeling 
only  in  extension ;  for  certitude  may  subjectively  character- 
ize any  knowing  whatsoever,  whereas  immediacy, — or  ob- 
jective certitude,  shall  we  say? — is  definitely  restricted  to 
certain  classes  of  cognitions. 

Hamilton  makes  the  distinction  between  immediate  or 
intuitive  and  mediate  or  representative  knowledge  with  his 
usual  ponderous  explicitness ;  l  for,  as  he  observes,  it  is  a 
distinction  of  considerable  importance  to  the  natural  realist. 
"  In  an  immediate  cognition,"  he  says,  "  the  object  is  single 
and  the  term  unequivocal.  Here  the  object  in  conscious- 
ness and  the  object  in  existence  are  the  same ;  in  the 
language  of  the  schools,  the  esse  intentionale  or  representa- 
tivam,  coincides  with  the  esse  entitativum.  In  a  mediate 
cognition,  on  the  other  hand,  the  object  is  two-fold,  and  the 
term  equivocal ;  the  object  known  and  representing  being 
different  from  the  object  unknown,  except  as  represented." 
And  again :  "  An  intuitive  cognition,  as  an  act,  is  complete 
and  absolute,  as  irrespective  of  aught  beyond  the  dominion 
of  consciousness;  whereas,  a  representative  cognition,  as  an 
act,  is  incomplete,  being  relative  to,  and  vicarious  of,  an 
existence  beyond  the  sphere  of  actual  knowledge.  ...  In 
their  relations  to  each  other,  immediate  knowledge  is  com- 
plete, as  self-sufficient ;  mediate  knowledge,  on  the  contrary, 
is  incomplete,  as  dependent  on  the  other  for  its  realization." 

That  this  distinction  should  have  been  overlooked  by 
"  those  who  allowed  no  immediate  knowledge  to  the  mind, 
except  of  its  proper  modes,"  is  hardly  to  be  wondered  at,  in 

1  Lectures  on  Metaphysics,  Lecture  xxiii. 


20  THE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  [20 

Hamilton's  opinion.  "  But  it  is  more  astonishing  that  those 
who  maintain  that  the  mind  is  immediately  percipient  of 
external  things,  should  not  have  signalized  this  distinction  ; 
as  on  it  is  established  the  essential  difference  of  perception 
as  a  faculty  of  intuitive,  imagination  as  a  faculty  of  repre- 
sentative, knowledge." 

It  is  perhaps  a  just  criticism  of  extreme  idealists,  such 
as  Berkeley,  whom  Hamilton  doubtless  has  in  mind,  that  an 
important  discrimination  is  elided,  if  not  overlooked,  in  their 
thinking.  Even  if  the  esse  of  things  is  percipi,  the  esse  of 
ideas  "  perceived  by  attending  to  the  passions  and  opera- 
tions of  the  mind  "  or  of  those  "formed  by  help  of  memory 
and  imagination"  is  certainly  not  percipi  in  the  same  sense. 
Nor  does  the  difference  lie  merely  in  objective  necessity; 
the  table  that  is  seen  and  the  table  that  may  be  seen  at  will 
are  known  in  equally  compulsory  cognitions.  The  differ- 
ence is  rather  one  of  meaning  and  is  fundamental  in  experi- 
ence. 

Berkeley  uses  '  intuition '  in  a  different  sense  from  that 
which  Hamilton  gives  it.  With  Berkeley  it  means  a  rational 
rather  than  a  sensory  immediacy  ;  as,  writing  of  the  existence 
of  objects  in  the  perceiving  mind :  "  I  think  an  intuitive 
knowledge  may  be  obtained  of  this  by  any  one  that  shall 
attend  to  what  is  meant  by  the  term  exist  when  applied  to 
sensible  things."1  Here  "intuitive  knowledge"  unquestion- 
ably designates  a  rational  process. 

Hume's  division  of  the  sources  of  our  knowledge  into 
'  ideas '  and  '  impressions  '  tends  to  bring  out  the  distinc- 
tion, but  it  is  half  obliterated  again  in  his  thesis  that  "ideas 
in  their  first  appearance  are  derived  from  simple  impressions, 
which  are  correspondent  to  them,  and  which  they  exactly 
represent." 

Natural  realism   is   itself  open  to  criticism  on  this  score 

1  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge,  sec.  3. 


2I-|  THE  MEANING  OF  KNOWLEDGE  2  I 

when  it  uses  immediate  or  intuitive  knowledge  to  designate 
knowledge  of  reality.  If  the  object  of  such  knowledge  is 
"  known  as  actually  existing,"  its  reality  "  given  uncondition- 
ally as  a  fact,"  as  Hamilton  says  it  is,  there  is  no  room  for 
any  discrepancy  between  reality  and  our  immediate  knowl- 
edge of  it;  error  is  impossible;  the  being  of  the  thing  is 
bound  to  be,  if  not  the  perception  of  it,  at  least  just  as  it  is 
perceived.  And  this  we  know  is  not  the  fact  in  actual  ex- 
perience. If  ever  natural  realism  is  to  be  rehabilitated,  it 
must  (1)  distinguish  between  immediate  knowledge  and  its 
truth,  and  (2)  tell  just  what  is  the  content  immediately 
known.     It  must  resolve  itself  into  an  empirical  realism. 

A  test  of  immediacy  in  knowledge  is  not  easy  to  find. 
Whatever  it  may  be,  it  must  lie  within  the  consciousness 
constituting  the  cognitive  state ;  it  must  be  a  conscious  sign 
of  some  sort,  just  as  the  feeling  of  certitude  is  the  conscious 
sign  of  knowledge  in  general.  The  immediately  known  is 
not  distinguished  by  any  particular  kind  of  certitude ;  nor 
by  the  exercise  of  a  greater  compulsion ;  nor  yet  by  the 
superior  vividness  of  its  presentational  elements  (for  ideas 
recognized  as  representative  may  be  even  more  vivid  than 
our  dimmer  perceptions).  The  mark  of  immediacy  is  rather 
to  be  found  in  the  nature  of  the  reference  of  the  knowing 
state.  The  content  immediately  known  is  one  that  does  not 
refer  beyond  itself;  it  is  one  that  means  just  what  it  is,  one 
in  which  the  esse  intentionale  and  esse  entitativum  do  really 
coincide.  Such  a  state  is  not  necessarily  confined  to  percep- 
tion of  things  ;  it  may  be  introspectively  centered  on  psychi- 
cal phenomena.  And  it  cannot  be  sharply  distinguished 
from  representative  knowledge,  for  Hume's  contention 
that  ideas  and  impressions  eventually  merge  into  one  an- 
other appears  to  be  well  founded.  Nevertheless  in  practical 
as  well  as  in  philosophical  thinking  we  do  distinguish  the 
two  types  of  knowing,  and  the  ground   of  our  distinction 


22  THE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  [22 

seems  to  lie  in  the  greater  self-sufficiency  of  the  type  we  call 
immediate. 

With  Kant  intuition  (Anschauung)  was  used  only  as  the 
description  of  knowledge  embodied  in  sense  impressions 
and  in  time  and  space  as  the  pure  forms  of  sensibility.  All 
that  is  given  from  without,  the  stuff  of  the  external  world,  is 
given  in  such  intuition.  But  the  world  that  is  immediately 
given  to  us  is  no  mere  chaos  of  rhapsodical  sensations:  it 
is  the  organized  world  of  experience.  It  is  objects  and 
things  that  are  immediately  known.  And  in  order  to  ac- 
count for  this  fact,  we  have  the  doctrine  of  pure  a  priori 
forms  of  the  understanding,  the  categories,  or  concepts, 
without  which  "  perceptions  would  belong  to  no  experience 
at  all,  would  be  without  an  object,  a  blind  play  of  repre- 
sentations,— less  even  than  a  dream."1 

It  is  this  governing  function  which  the  Kantian  categories 
exercise  over  experience  that  gives  dignity  to  the  mind's 
role.  It  shows  us  that  the  compulsion  of  fact  comes  not 
wholly  from  without.  The  world  is  given  as  a  rational 
world,  and  our  immediate  knowledge  of  it  is  insight  as  well 
as  intuition. 

To  my  mind  this  is  a  distinction  of  some  significance.  It 
suggests  a  clue  to  possible  indefinite  extensions  of  imme- 
diate knowing.  Rational  insight — an  insight  which  shall 
hold  in  poise  all  the  tortuous  intricacy  of  the  most  subtle 
analysis  together  with  the  most  daring  reaches  of  general- 
ization— may  be  the  final  type  of  knowledge.  Often  enough 
we  have  experiences  that  bear  some  analogy  to  this — a  con- 
sciousness which  grasps  some  elusive,  sought-for  truth, 
grasps  and  struggles  with  almost  breathless  endeavor  to 
hold  it  but  for  so  long  as  may  serve  to  impress  the  course 
of  its  laborious  elucidation  upon  the  mind.  Such  thought 
is  an  end  in  itself,  far  away  from  our  ordinary  ideas  as  it  may 

1  Critique  of  Pure  Reason  (Max  Miiller's  translation),  p.  92. 


23-|  THE  MEANING  OF  KNOWLEDGE  23 

be.  The  difficulty  with  it  is  the  difficulty  of  high  altitudes 
— we  cannot  quite  catch  our  breath.  But  its  charm,  too,  is 
the  charm  of  the  heights — the  same  quick  throb,  the  same 
exhilaration. 

In  his  chapter  on  "  Noetic  Synthesis,"  »  Dr.  Stout  gives  a 
clear  exposition  of  what  may  be  inferred  as  to  this  type  of 
knowing.  In  the  ordinary  consciousness  it  is  an  "  appre- 
hension of  the  whole  which  determines  the  order  and 
connection  of  the  apprehension  of  the  parts,"  and  this 
"  schematic  apprehension  of  a  whole  is  as  much  a  distinct 
content  of  consciousness  and  a  distinct  factor  in  mental 
process,  as  is  the  sensation  of  red  or  blue."  But  there  are 
degrees  of  this  synthesis  quite  impossible  for  the  ordinary 
consciousness  to  conceive,  as  in  the  marvelous  mathematical 
calculations  of  the  boy  Colburn,  or  the  case  of  Mozart,  who 
held  whole  symphonies  in  mind  at  once.  Immediate  knowl- 
edge such  as  this  is  altogether  beyond  the  ken  of  the  com- 
mon mind. 

7.  It  is  only  because  we  cannot  win  immediate  insight 
into  everything  that  representative  knowledge  is  needed. 
Our  intellectual  necessities  are  far  too  complex  to  be  satis- 
fied with  the  slow-going  intuitions  of  sense,  and  our  powers 
are  not  sufficiently  developed  to  enable  adequate  measure 
of  the  insights  of  pure  thought.  Consequently  the  greater 
portion  of  our  knowledge  is  mediate,  or  representative. 

There  is  a  certain  contention  of  modern  critical  realism 
that  knowledge  in  its  very  nature  implies  a  chasm  between 
knower  and  known,  that  it  must  be  "  knowledge  <?/an  object 
by  a  subject,"  and  consequently  that  the  known,  if  it  is  an 
existent  reality,  can  never  be  in  consciousness.2  The  known 
and  the   real   must  exist  "  extra-consciously "  and    "  trans- 

1  Analytic  Psychology  (Swann,  Sonnenschein  &  Co.,  London,  1896). 
* "  The  Problem  of  Epistemology,"  by  Andrew  Seth,  in  Philosophical  Review, 
vol.  i. 


■v 


2  4  THE  PR  OBLEM  OF  ME  TAPH  YSICS  [24 

consciously,"  in  the  same  world  with  the  knowledge,  but 
ontologically  different  from  it.  The  interest  of  this  position 
lies  in  its  denial  of  immediate  knowledge  in  the  sense  held 
by  the  natural  realist.  The  intermediation  of  the  perceptive 
process  between  the  knower  and  the  known  is  taken  not  as 
proof  of  idealism,  but  of  the  reality  of  that  difference 
between  knower  and  known  of  which  the  naive  consciousness 
is  so  thoroughly  aware. 

But  this  very  naive  awareness  is  sufficient  reply  to  any 
contention  that  seeks  to  find  a  chasm  between  the  two 
factors  of  knowledge.  To  be  aware  of  anything  is  to  be 
directly  conscious  of  it,  to  possess  it  in  consciousness  (not, 
therefore,  in  the  head).  There  need  be  no  identification  of 
the  knowing  self  and  the  known  thing,  but  we  are  forced  in 
the  case  both  of  the  self  and  the  thing  to  use  the  adjective 
for  an  adequate  description  of  them  in  relation  to  one 
another,  and  there  is  no  warrant  whatever  for  attaching  all 
the  meaning  of  knowledge  to  the  self  that  knows. 

All  knowledge  must  be  knowledge  of  something  or  other. 
But  that  does  not  prevent  the  knowledge  from  being  imme- 
diate nor  its  object  from  being  in  consciousness,  be  it  knowl- 
edge of  psychical  state,  or  of  idea,  or  of  real  thing.  It  is 
only  when  what  is  immediately  known  in  consciousness 
stands  for  some  experience  that  is  not  in  consciousness,  that 
we  are  at  all  warranted  in  saying  that  knowledge  of  anything 
implies  a  chasm  between  the  knowledge  and  the  thing,  and 
then  only  in  a  different  sense  from  that  in  which  we  distin- 
guish the  knowing  self  and  its  object.  In  this  different 
sense  the  chasm  exists  between  a  symbol  and  its  meaning1 
— between  an  idea,  for  example,  and  the  fulfillment  of  its 
implications  in  experience.  It  is  a  chasm  between  what  is 
represented  and  its  representation,  and  however  relative  a 

1  An  especial  acknowledgment  is  due  to  Mr.  Bradley's  admirable  treatment  of 
this  subject  in  The  Principles  of  Logic, 


2 j]  THE  MEANING  Ob  KNOWLEDGE  2$ 

chasm  it  may  be,  it  is  the  basis  for  our  special  discrimination 
of  mediate  knowledge. 

There  are  two  types  of  representative  knowledge,  and  they 
are  distinguished  not  by  the  content  of  the  representations, 
but  by  the  nature  of  their  reference  to  the  objects  repre- 
sented. The  first  of  these  types  comprises  the  great  body  of 
human  knowledge,  and  may  be  designated  '  descriptive  rep- 
resentation.' The  objects  denoted  by  its  symbols  are  known 
quantities — that  is  to  say,  we  can  at  any  time,  actually  or 
conceivably,  substitute  an  intuitive  content  for  the  symbolical 
content.  The  thing  symbolized  is  always  (theoretically,  at 
least)  a  possible  object  of  immediate  experience.  The 
symbol  employed  in  the  thought  is  confessedly  an  abstrac- 
tion from  the  thing  (if  an  image),  or  a  sign  of  such  abstrac- 
tion (if  a  word)  ;  and  its  concrete  experiential  value  is 
always  as  ready  at  hand  for  substitution  as  is  the  known 
quantity  for  its  symbol  in  algebra.  Substitution,  in  fact,  is 
the  final  test  of  validity  for  all  knowledge  of  this  type. 

The  second  kind  of  representative  knowledge  may  be 
termed  '  symbolical  representation.'  Here  the  object  re- 
presented bears  more  analogy  to  the  unknown  algebraic 
quantity.  What  we  have  given  in  consciousness  is  an  x — a 
symbol  of  something  other  than  itself,  the  reality  of  which 
cannot  be  substituted  for  its  representative.  This  is  because 
the  symbol  is  not  now  a  product  of  abstraction,  or,  if  it  be 
so,  it  is  adapted  to  represent  something  quite  different  from 
the  object  from  which  it  is  abstracted.  It  represents  rather 
something  outside  the  range  of  intuitive  experience  and  ex- 
ternal to  consciousness.1 

The  origin  of  all  symbols  must  eventually  be  found  in  im- 
mediate experience.  The  content  of  the  symbol  is  of  the 
texture  of  experience.  There  can,  then,  be  no  reason  for 
affirming  any  similarity  of  symbol  and  symbolized  when  the 

1  For  further  discussion  of  the  possibility  of  such  meanings,  see  chap,  iv,  sec.  17. 


26  THE  PR OBLEM  OF  ME  TAPHY  SICS  [26 

latter  is  professedly  extra-conscious.  Intuitive  knowledge 
itself — that  is,  immediate  experience  of  anything — might  be 
taken,  and  by  some  thinkers  is  taken,1  as  symbolical  of  a 
trans-conscious  known.  But  when  so  taken  there  is  an  un- 
fortunate tendency  to  lose  sight  of  the  symbolical  nature  of 
the  intuition  and  to  imagine  that  we  perceive  an  immediate 
similitude  between  the  symbol  and  the  reality,  whereas  what 
we  have  is  only  a  sign  of  an  existence. 

Representative  knowledge  of  this  purely  symbolical  type 
has  no  a  priori  right  ever  to  become  anything  other  than 
representative.  There  is,  a  priori,  no  possibility  of  substi- 
tuting the  object  of  knowledge  for  its  symbol,  nor  of  affirm- 
ing any  likeness  between  object  and  knowledge.  The  chasm 
is  a  real  one.  All  that  we  can  affirm  concerning  this  x,  this 
unknown,  must  be  derived  a  posteriori  from  the  grounds  upon 
which  we  come  to  assert  its  existence  in  the  first  place.  And 
these  grounds  must  lie  wholly  within  our  experience — that 
is,  within  the  range  of  our  intuitive  knowledge  and  its  ideal 
extension  by  means  of  representative  knowledge  of  the  de- 
scriptive type.  The  object  of  knowledge  in  symbolical  re- 
presentation is  inferred,  and  inferred  not  from  any  necessarily 
symbolical  nature  of  x  (which  may  be  arbitrarily  chosen), 
but  from  some  necessity  or  probability  to  be  found  in  intui- 
tion or  in  the  ideal  extension  of  it. 

The  meaning  of  x  is  thus,  in  a  way,  a  created  meaning, 
attached  to  it  apart  from  any  inner  necessity.  This  mean- 
ing, in  so  far  as  it  is  a  designation  of  some  object  external 
to  consciousness,  is  the  knowledge  that  x  represents;  for 
the  thing  meant,  by  hypothesis,  can  never  be  cognized.  As 
to  what  the  meaning  maybe  there  are  two  alternatives:  (1) 
it  may  be  mere  existence,  a  bare  assertion  that  somewhat  or 

1  It  is  only  in  this  sense  that  I  can  understand  many  of  the  expressions  used  by 
Mr.  Bradley  and  Mr.  Bosanquet  in  their  discussions  of  "  immediate  contact  with 
reality  "  in  sense-perception. 


2j-\  THE  MEANING  OF  KNOWLEDGE  27 

other  exists  external  to  consciousness,  with  no  attempt  to 
determine  or  characterize  this  object;  or  (2)  if  any  charac- 
terization beyond  mere  existence  is  made,  it  can  only  be  a 
predication  of  the  similarity  of  the  object  represented  to 
some  content  of  intuitive  knowledge.  We  can  qualify,  in 
other  words,  only  in  terms  of  our  experience,  and  our  ulti- 
mate reference  must  always  be  to  immediate  intuition. 

8.  It  is  just  such  interpretation  of  an  object  of  knowledge 
in  terms  of  intuitive  knowing  that  we  mean  when  we  speak 
of  rendering  anything  intelligible.  As  heretofore  said, 
intuitive  knowledge  is  par  excellence  a  knowledge  which 
asks  for  nothing  and  refers  to  nothing  beyond  itself.  It  is 
in  itself  the  intelligible.  Intelligibility  always  means  eluci- 
dation in  immediate  experience,  and  all  our  knowledge  must 
be  subject  to  such  elucidation  as  its  final  test. 

I  do  not  mean  to  assert  that  the  only  valid  knowledge 
must  be  intelligible  in  this  sense.  Probably  we  may  assert 
as  much  of  the  only  valuable  knowledge.  But  that  does  not 
mean  that  there  can  be  no  criterion  of  validity  that  can 
establish  the  truth  or  actuality  of  a  representative  knowledge 
the  whole  content  of  whose  assertion  should  be  that  there  is 
existence  external  to  consciousness.  Into  the  more  precise 
meaning  of  this,  inquiry  will  be  made  hereafter. 

In  resume :  At  least  four  distinct  meanings  of  the  term 
knowledge  have  been  discussed.  Of  these,  two  fall  under 
the  head  of  immediate,  and  two  under  that  of  representative 
knowledge.  Immediate  knowledge  may  be  (1)  direct 
intuition  of  objects,  ideas,  or  psychical  states;  (2)  it  may 
mean  a  rational  insight  by  means  of  other  than  symbolical 
mental  contents.  Representative  knowledge  is  either  ( 1 ) 
descriptive  representation,  wherein  the  meaning  is  partly 
contained  in  the  symbol  or  may  readily  be  substituted  for 
it;   or   (2)   purely  symbolical    representation,  wherein  the 


2  8  THE  PR  OBLEM  OF  ME  TA  PH  YSICS  [  2  8 

true  meaning  can  never  be  substituted  for  the  symbol,  but 
must  always  lie  beyond  the  reach  of  actual  experience. 
Finally,  it  has  been  said  that  intelligibility  must  lie  either  in 
some  content  of  immediate  knowledge,  or  in  direct  reference 
to  such  content. 


CHAPTER  III 


THE  OBJECT  OF  KNOWLEDGE 


9.  WHEN  thought  begins  to  break  loose  from  the  con- 
straint of  concrete  detail  and  to  concern  itself  with  abstract 
speculation,  one  of  the  first  questions  that  it  asks  is,  What 
is  the  object  of  knowledge?  What  is  it  that  we  wish  to 
know  or  explain?  And  the  answer  almost  invariably  given 
by  philosophers  is,  Reality  or  the  Existent.  Now  it  may 
seem  either  a  quibble  or  a  demand  for  a  whole  ontology  to 
ask  just  what  is  meant  by  'reality';  yet  a  very  little  ex- 
perience of  metaphysical  juggleries  with  the  term  is  sufficient 
to  persuade  any  one  who  wishes  to  think  clearly  that  the 
inquiry  is  continuously  necessary. 

A  naive  realism  which  takes  for  granted  the  reality  of 
passing  experiences  or  distinguishes  a  real  and  an  unreal  for 
practical  purposes  alone,  is  the  natural  position  of  unre- 
flective  thought.  It  is  the  so-called  "common  sense"  real- 
ism. And  it  is  only  when  experience  has  shown  us  the 
unreliability  of  our  senses  and  our  perceptions,  or  when  we 
encounter  the  perplexities  of  change  and  becoming,  the 
beginnings  and  endings  of  things,  that  the  naive  view  gives 
way  to  reflection.  It  is  then  that  we  distinguish  a  true 
reality,  compared  with  which  what  is  furnished  us  by  the 
senses  is  mere  appearance  or  delusive  shadowing ;  or,  if  it 
is  the  inconstancy  of  the  phenomenal  world  that  has  most 
affected  us,  we  endeavor  to  discover  amid  its  change  and 
transformation  a  permanent  reality  which  we  may  contrast 
with  the  unreality  of  that  which  passes  away. 

29]  29 


3o  THE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  [30 

Plato  was  the  first  clearly  to  perceive  that  the  search  for 
reality  is  a  search  for  truth,  and  he  sought  to  satisfy  the 
logical  requirements  of  the  quest  with  his  doctrine  that 
Ideas,  or  ideal  truths,  alone  are  real ;  whereas  the  earlier 
philosophers  had  been  content  to  ease  their  more  proximate 
curiosity,  occasioned  only  by  the  problem  of  change,  in 
notions  of  elements,  or  permanent  substances,  underlying 
and  persisting  through  transition.  But  Plato,  not  distin- 
guishing the  two  aspects  of  the  problem,  carried  over  this 
very  notion  of  permanence  into  his  doctrine  of  Ideas.  These 
were  universal  principles,  and  they  were  eternal ;  they  were 
the  world's  truth  and  its  enduring  basis.  Perhaps  with  Plato 
the  Ideas  were  not  pure  abstractions  nor  wholly  divested  of 
a  garb  of  mundane  flesh  and  blood.  Perhaps  they  were  still 
of  a  plastic  stuff  of  experience  from  which  the  intensely 
aesthetic  Greek  thought  could  not  quite  free  itself.  In  any 
event  it  appears  probable  that  such  curious  conceptions  as 
of  timeless  eternity  and  of  immortality  through  emancipation 
from  a  world  of  change  into  one  of  eternal  truths,'  owe  their 
origin  to  this  early  confusion  of  the  problems  of  reality. 

The  whole  aim  of  Aristotle's  Metaphysics  is  the  determina- 
tion and  definition  of  reality  {ovaia)  ;  but  he  is  by  no  means 
consistent  in  his  developments  of  the  concept.  Sometimes 
he  treats  the  real  as  a  universal  and  permanent  subject — 
"that  of  which  all  else  is  predicated  without  itself  being 
predicated  of  anything  else"  ; 2  but  at  other  times  the  reality 
seems  to  him  most  truly  to  be  the  concrete  reality  or  essen- 
tial being  of  the  individual  thing.  It  is  in  this  second  usage 
that  we  find  in  Aristotle  the  first  effort  to  re-apply  the  con- 
cept on  a  philosophical  basis  to  the  realities  of  the  naive 
view.     He  felt  the  strength  of  natural  realism  as  well  as  the 

1  This  doctrine  is  elucidated  in   Professor  Fullerton's  brochure,  On  Spinozisiic 
Immortality  (University  of  Pennsylvania  Publications,  1899). 
1  Metaphysics,  book  9,  chap.  iii. 


3  T  "I  THE  OBJECT  OF  KNOWLEDGE  3  1 

need  for  analyzing,  the  necessity  of  accounting  for  the 
manifold  of  change  as  well  as  for  the  permanent  and  uni- 
versal. Each  aspect  of  experience  seemed  somehow  real 
to  him,  yet  all  the  aspects  were  not  real  in  the  same  way. 
In  this  hesitancy  and  puzzle  is  clearly  foreshadowed  that 
final  view  which  seems  to  be  the  logical  outcome  of  every 
speculative  pursuit  of  an  ultimate,  whether  Reality  or  Being 
or  Spinozistic  Substance,  that  in  the  end,  in  some  sense  or 
other,  every  phase  of  experience,  the  most  transitory  and 
phenomenal  as  truly  as  the  most  permanent,  must  be 
enveloped  in  the  wide  mantle  of  Reality. 

It  will  readily  be  seen  how  many  misunderstandings  are 
apt  to  follow  from  the  use  of  a  term  so  ambiguous.  The 
number  of  its  meanings  is  practically  indefinite :  with  each 
grade  of  philosophic  thought  and  each  advance  in  insight 
its  significance  varies.  Nevertheless,  we  may  distinguish 
certain  typical  principle  meanings  which  will  serve  as  guides 
in  our  interpretations  of  it.  And  these  typical  meanings 
are  four  in  number. 

I.  In  its  widest  signification  'Reality'  is  heteronymous 
with  '  Existence '  or  '  Being '  (also  taken  in  widest  ex- 
tension). In  this  sense  it  denotes  the  sum-total  of  happen- 
ings in  the  universe — everything  physical,  psychical  and 
transcendental, — in  short,  the  universe  itself  as  the  all- 
inclusive.  In  such  use  of  the  word  we  should  bear  in  mind 
that  it  ceases  to  have  adjectival  value.  If  it  qualifies  every- 
thing, it  can  distinguish  nothing. 

II.  We  may  use  '  reality '  to  designate  the  permanent  or 
persistent,  taken  as  that  which  underlies  the  changing  and 
phenomenal.  It  is  reality  as  subject  or  substance ;  and  the 
real  is  distinguished  from  the  unreal  as  the  essential  from 
the  accidental. 

III.  Closely  allied  to  this  is  the  conception  of  reality  as 
truth.     In  this  sense  reality  is  the  essential  for  knowledge. 


j2  THE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  [32 

It  is  the  true  being  of  the  generic  and  the  universal  as 
opposed  to  the  falsehood  of  mere  appearance.  This  mean- 
ing is  seldom  distinguished  from  the  last  preceding  in  those 
systems  where  it  actually  finds  place;  but  logically  it  is 
distinct. 

IV.  The  fourth  meaning  defines  reality  within  experience. 
In  the  beginning  it  is  the  naive  view  and  is  applied  to  the 
ordinary  discrimination  of  the  real  and  the  unreal  in  our 
common  experience.  It  is  the  sense  in  which  things  are 
real  to  us,  real  because  subject  to  experimental  tests,  and 
because  they  persist  under  such  tests.  Permanence  is  here 
a  mark  of  reality  as  in  sense  II,  but  the  degree  of  permanence 
required  and  the  kind  of  knowledge  which  we  can  have  of 
the  reality  serve  to  differentiate  the  two  meanings.  For  the 
permanence  required  of  the  underlying  subject  or  substance 
is  absolute,  whereas  the  permanence  of  the  real  within  ex- 
perience is  only  a  relative  persistence,  the  standard  being  so 
variable  that  at  times  we  are  unable  to  say  certainly  whether 
an  object  is  real  or  not.  And  as  to  our  knowledge  of  these 
realities,  we  may  know  the  real  of  experience  immediately 
from  the  very  fact  that  it  exists  as  experienced,  but  the 
underlying  reality  can  be  known  only  representatively. 

10.  It  is  sufficiently  plain  what  is  meant  by  '  reality'  and 
4  real  things '  in  common  speech,  and  it  is  plain,  too,  how 
they  come  to  have  their  importance ;  that  is,  how  they  come 
to  be  real.  The  relatively  persistent  phenomena  in  the  world 
are  the  most  important  to  life  activities.  Speculation  in 
futures  counts  from  an  evolutional  point  of  view,  and  the 
notion  that  the  enduring  in  experience  is  the  essential  and 
actual  is  formed  in  response  to  biological  need.  Ordinarily 
a  real  thing  is  one  that  satisfies  practical  necessities,  and  in 
so  far  as  its  capacity  to  meet  these  necessities  is  known  we 
consider  it  explained  and  accounted  for. 

But  we  must  not  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that  this  is  the  naive 


3  3  J  THE  OBJE  C  T  OF  KNO  WLED  GE  33 

view,  and  that  the  satisfaction  offered  does  not  extend  to 
speculative  need.  The  indeterminateness  and  relativity  of 
empirical  reality  can  never  content  the  speculative  demand 
for  an  eternal  and  true  reality,  one  that  may  be  counted  on 
not  only  to  outspan  human  years  and  human  centuries,  but 
the  uttermost  limits  of  time;  one  that  shall  be  true  not  only 
for  my  needs  and  my  knowledge,  but  for  the  innermost 
essence  of  things ;  one  that  shall  constitute  the  gist  of  the 
world. 

The  meaning  of  such  a  need  is  not  revealed  to  us  all  at 
once.  It  is  only  by  slow  growths  in  insight,  blind  feelings 
of  the  way,  that  we  come  to  realize  the  full  significance  of 
the  metaphysical  problem.  And  when  first  we  reach  to  grasp 
our  will-o'-the-wisp,  it  is  with  little  suspicion  of  the  wearying 
pursuit  that  is  to  follow.  Now  the  ways  in  which  we  may 
take  up  the  quest  for  reality  are  two.  We  may  begin  in  the 
Aristotelian  way  with  analysis  of  the  empirical  world,  or  we 
may  undertake  a  dialectical  inquiry  into  the  nature  of  truth. 
Let  it  not  be  suspected  that  we  must  end  in  realism  or  ideal- 
ism according  to  the  method  we  adopt.  Idealism  and  real- 
ism are  but  doctrines  of  the  kinds  of  reality  that  may  termi- 
nate our  search;  the  search  itself,  whatever  its  method,  is 
perfectly  impartial.  Plato's  dialectic  delivered  unto  him 
Ideas,  but  the  no  less  abstruse  dialectical  philosophizing  of 
the  Scholastics  did  not  endanger  their  thought's  anchorage 
in  an  underlying  substance  of  things ;  and  the  realism  of 
Locke  was  no  more  an  outcome  of  the  empirical  method 
than  was  the  idealism  of  Berkeley. 

In  German  philosophy  since  Kant  the  search  for  reality 
has  been  upon  a  different  basis  from  that  which  determined 
the  thinking  of  the  English  and  Scottish  schools.  The  reality 
which  Locke  defined  by  primary  qualities,  which  Berkeley 
was  concerned  with  denying  and  Hume  with  doubting,  was 
no  more  than  the  '  absolute  substance '  of  the  Scholastics  or 


34  THE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  [34 

the  various  '  elements  '  of  ancient  physical  cosmologies.  It 
was  of  this  same  reality,  re-endowed  with  the  sensuous  rich- 
ness which  had  been  gradually  stripped  away,  that  the  Nat- 
ural Realists  asserted  immediate  knowledge  ;  and  it  is  in  place 
of  this  reality  that  John  Stuart  Mill  offered  us  "  permanent 
possibilities  of  sensation."  In  German  thought,  however, 
the  notion  of  reality  as  underlying  substance  has  never  really 
gained  a  foothold ;  at  least  to  the  moderns  it  has  ceased  to 
be  a  "  living  option,"  to  use  Professor  James'  expression.  It 
was  the  office  of  Kant  to  bring  the  real  world,  the  world  of 
warmth  and  color  and  flesh  and  blood,  back  from  the  Ultima 
Thule  whither  doubtings  and  denyings  had  banished  it. 
True,  he  left  in  that  vague  region  "  things-in-themselves  "  to 
eke  out  their  pale  existence  in  unknown  ways  ;  but  the  mean- 
ing of  reality  was  exhausted  within  the  world  of  experience, 
and  the  shadowy  being  of  the  Dinge  an  sich  seemed  only 
irrational  and  exasperating  to  his  compatriot  successors. 

The  method  of  the  English  philosophers  had  been  the 
method  of  empirical  analysis.  Kant  gave  to  the  German 
mode  of  investigation  its  dialectical  turn.  Not  that  the  Ger- 
man method  became  invariably  dialectic,  or  the  reality  which 
was  sought  necessarily  a  logical  reality.  The  Kantian  reality 
was  indubitably  empirical,  as  directly  given  in  experience  as 
the  realities  recognized  by  the  Scottish  philosophers ;  and 
the  conceptions  of  reality  held  by  Herbart  and  Lotze  are  the 
result  of  empirical  rather  than  dialectical  necessity.  But 
the  reality  sought  for  by  German  empiricism  appears  never 
to  have  been  quite  so  much  an  "  other  " — if  I  may  use  an 
Hegelism — to  the  knowledge  of  it,  as  was  that  of  the  British 
schools.  There  has  rather  been  a  tendency  to  find  a  point 
of  contact  or  identity  between  the  knowledge  and  the  known 
real,  an  immediacy  where  the  being  in  experience  is  the 
reality. 

Hegel,  of   course,  stands   for  the   extreme   in   dialectical 


3  k  I  THE  OBJE CT  OF  KNO  WL EDGE  35 

method.  As  every  exhaustive  dialectic  must  show,  his  sys- 
tem shows  us  that  in  the  end  the  universe  as  a  whole,  in  its 
most  evanescent  as  well  as  in  its  most  stable  aspects,  in  its 
contradictions  as  in  its  consistencies,  is  the  object  of  our  knowl- 
edge and  the  reality  to  be  explained.  '  Reality '  must  be 
taken  as  heteronymous  with  '  universe,'  even  at  the  risk  of 
losing  discriminative  significance,  for  neither  our  purely 
speculative  interest  nor  our  practical  human  need  will  be 
satisfied  with  anything  less  than  a  world-comprehending 
explanation.  The  meaning  of  human  life  can  be  read  for  us 
to-day  only  in  terms  of  the  universe. 

11.  The  most  thorough-going  dialectical  development  of 
the  concept  of  reality  by  any  English  thinker  is  to  be  found 
in  Mr.  Bradley's  Appearance  and  Reality.1  With  him  the 
concept  is  primarily  a  logical  one.  Reality  is  the  ultimate 
subject  of  all  judgments  and  is  itself  not  a  predicate  of  any- 
thing. The  very  definition  of  judgment  is  "  an  idea  predi- 
cated of  reality"  (p.  163).2  Again,  reality  is  discriminated 
from  appearance  as  an  existence  from  a  quality,  a  bare 
occurrence  from  a  content,  a  'that'  from  a  'what.'  Ap- 
pearance is  the  unreal,  and  it  is  unreal  because  it  is  self- 
contradictory  or  non-self-subsistent.     But  appearance  is  also 

1  It  is  proper  to  preface  any  interpretation  or  criticism  of  Mr.  Bradley's  work 
with  a  note  of  explanation.  It  is  not  often  that  we  find  a  philosophical  writer 
who  uses  his  terms  with  such  genial  vicariousness  and  at  the  same  time  clearly 
understands  the  differences  implied  by  them.  I  have  no  doubt  that  Mr.  Bradley 
finds  nothing  inconsistent  in  verbal  contradiction.  If  I  may  be  allowed  the  sug- 
gestion, his  own  mind  performs  very  much  the  function  of  his  Absolute,  transmut- 
ing contradictions  in  a  higher  synthesis.  But  it  is  something  unfortunate  that  he 
should  expect  a  like  facility  on  the  part  of  his  readers.  Whatever  I  have  to  offer 
in  comment  upon  Mr.  Bradley's  work  is  the  result  of  a  laborious  effort  to  under- 
stand his  doctrine  of  reality.  If  it  should  happen  that  every  statement  I  may 
make  can  be  refuted  from  some  page  of  his  work,  I  can  only  reply  that  on  some 
other  page  it  is  at  least  apparently  substantiated,  and  if  every  meaning  I  have 
read  into  his  terms  should  turn  out  to  be  untrue  to  his  thoughts,  it  merely  proves 
that  I  am  unlucky  at  toss-penny. 

3  All  references  are  to  the  second  edition. 


36  THE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  [36 

real :  not  as  appearance  but  as  the  actual  content  of  reality 
— "the  stuff  of  which  the  Universe  is  made"  (p.  572). J  It 
is  appearance  which  enables  reality  to  be  real ;  for  while 
reality,  of  course,  is  not  appearance,  it  is  still  "nothing  at 
all  apart  from  appearances"  (p.  551).  The  appearances 
serve  to  qualify  the  real  as  an  adjective  qualifies  a  noun. 
By  themselves  they  are  nothing ;  they  are  unreal,  as  the 
mere  adjective  by  itself  stands  for  no  reality ;  but  as  predi- 
cated of  reality  they  serve  to  identify  it  by  adding  to  bare 
existence  an  essential  content. 

"  If  we  take  up  anything  considered  real,  no  matter  what 
it  is,  we  find  in  it  two  aspects.  There  are  always  two  things 
we  can  say  about  it ;  and  if  we  cannot  say  both  we  have  not 
got  reality.  There  is  a  '  what'  and  a  'that,'  an  existence  and 
a  content,  and  the  two  are  inseparable.  That  anything 
should  be  and  yet  should  be  nothing  in  particular,  or  that  a 
quality  should  not  qualify  and  give  a  character  to  anything, 
are  obviously  impossible.  If  we  try  to  get  the  'that'  by 
itself,  we  do  not  get  it,  for  either  we  have  it  qualified,  or  else 
we  fail  utterly.  If  we  try  to  get  the  '  what '  by  itself,  we  find 
at  once  that  it  is  not  at  all.  It  points  to  something  beyond, 
and  cannot  exist  by  itself  and  as  a  bare  adjective.  Neither 
of  these  aspects,  if  you  isolate  it,  can  be  taken  as  real,  or 
indeed  in  that  case  is  itself  any  longer.  They  are  distin- 
guishable only  and  are  not  divisible"  (p.  162). 

The  mere  existence,  then,  is  by  itself  no  more  honestly 
real  than  the  mere  content.  It  is,  perhaps,  the  essential 
determination  of  any  reality,  but  per  se  it  is  nothing.  Only 
when  existence  is  qualified  by  a  content  can  we  have  reality. 
But  all  those  contents  of  experience  by  which  we  naturally 
qualify  reality  are  self-contradictory,  and  hence  are  unreal 
appearances.  This  is  the  gist  and  burden  of  the  book  on 
"  Appearance."     And  so,  in  order  to  get  a  real  reality,  we 

1  Appendix,  note  A. 


37]  THE  OBJECT  OF  KNOWLEDGE  37 

must  look  for  it  in  some  absolute  Real  where  the  content  of 
experience  may  exist  without  contradiction.  This  final  and 
sole  Reality,  Mr.  Bradley  finds  in  his  Absolute.  "  Reality," 
he  says  (p.  5 5 5 ) ,T  "is  above  thought  and  above  every  par- 
tial aspect  of  being,  but  it  includes  them  all.  Each  of  these 
completes  itself  by  uniting  with  the  rest,  and  so  makes  the 
perfection  of  the  whole.  And  this  whole  is  experience,  for 
anything  other  than  experience  is  meaningless.  Now  any- 
thing that  in  any  sense  '  is,'  qualifies  the  absolute  reality  and 
so  is  real.  But  on  the  other  hand,  because  everything,  to 
complete  itself  and  to  satisfy  its  own  claims,  must  pass 
beyond  itself,  nothing  in  the  end  is  real  except  the  Absolute. 
Everything  else  is  appearance ;  it  is  that  the  character  of 
which  goes  beyond  its  own  existence,  is  inconsistent  with  it 
and  transcends  it.  And  viewed  intellectually  appearance  is 
error.  But  the  remedy  lies  in  supplementation  by  inclusion 
of  that  which  is  both  outside  and  yet  essential,  and  in  the 
Absolute  this  remedy  is  perfected.  There  is  no  mere 
appearance  or  utter  chance  or  absolute  error,  but  all  is 
relative.  And  the  degree  of  reality  is  measured  by  the 
amount  of  supplementation  required  in  each  case,  and  by 
the  extent  to  which  the  completion  of  anything  entails  its 
own  destruction  as  such." 

It  is  the  lack  of  self-sufficiency  and  the  need  of  supple- 
mentation in  the  relatively  real  that  force  upon  us  the  con- 
ception of  an  Absolute.  In  immediate  experience  this  need 
leads  to  an  "  ideal  construction  of  reality  " 2  which  turns  out 
to  be  our  knowledge  of  the  absolute  Reality.  But  our 
knowledge  is  only  a  relative  reconciliation  of  the  contra- 
dictions of  experience,  and  consequently  is  only  relatively 

1  Appendix,  §  iv. 

2  As  I  understand  them,  the  logical  works  of  both  Mr.  Bradley  and  Mr.  Bosan- 
quet  essentially  consist  of  an  elucidation  of  the  principles  of  our  ideal  construction 
of  reality.  And  this,  it  appears,  is  their  important  and  valuable  contribution  to 
philosophic  thought. 


38  THE  PROBLEM  OE  METAPHYSICS  [38 

true.  The  Absolute,  on  the  other  hand,  eliminates,  or 
"  transfuses,"  all  contradictions,  and  it  alone  is  final  truth.1 

Mr.  Bradley  has  thus  two  distinct  conceptions  of  reality. 
There  is,  first,  the  reality  that  we  know  within  experience. 
This  reality  is  ever  relative  and  incomplete.  It  exists  in  all 
appearances,  but  in  varying  degrees.  And  it  exists  never  to 
be  realized  as  a  real  reality  at  all;  its  very  incompleteness 
always  points  to  some  higher  and  fuller  Reality  upon  which 
it  depends  for  its  character.  It  is  a  reality  the  one  function 
of  which  is  to  serve  as  the  subject  of  judgments,  and  in 
itself  it  must  ever  remain  ideal. 

Secondly,  there  is  the  reality  of  the  Absolute.  Here  first 
we  have  a  real  which  has  more  than  ideal  existence,  and 
it  is  also  the  true  ultimate  subject  to  which  all  judgments 
refer.  But  it  is  no  longer  a  merely  logical  reality,  for  it  has 
become  identical  with  the  Whole,  which  in  turn  is  the  Fact  of 
which  all  qualities  are  predicated.  We  may  say,  perhaps, 
that  what  as  Fact,  or  Whole,  or  Universe,  Mr.  Bradley  calls 
the  Absolute,  is  in  its  logical  aspect  Reality.  And  this  Reality 
is  somehow  or  other  one  with  those  relative  realities  about 
which  our  predications  are  immediately  made.  It  is,  I  should 
say,  the  fact  of  which  they  are  the  truth,  and  the  difference 
between  the  two  sorts  of  realities  may  be  accounted  for  on 
the  ground  that  fact  and  truth  can  never  quite  coalesce — 
"  even  absolute  truth  in  the  end  seems  to  turn  out  erro- 
neous "  (p.  544). 

It  appears  to  be  some  such  dualism  of  reality  as  the  fore- 
going that  leads  Mr.  Bradley  to  speak  of  a  "positive  rela- 
tion of  every  appearance  as  an  adjective  to  Reality,  and  the 
presence  of  Reality  among  its  appearances  in  different  de- 

1  The  Absolute,  however,  as  Mr.  Bradley  tells  us,  never  can  be  truth  in  a  proper 
sense  of  the  word.  For  there  is  an  "  essential  inconsistency  of  truth  "  which  he 
itates :  "  If  there  is  any  difference  between  what  it  means  and  what  it  stands  for, 
then  truth  is  clearly  not  realized.  But  if  there  is  no  such  difference,  then  truth 
has  ceased  to  exist." — Note,  p.  544. 


39"]  THE  OBJECT  OF  KNOWLEDGE  39 

grees  and  with  diverse  values,"  as  the  "  double  truth  found 
to  be  the  centre  of  philosophy"  (p.  551). 

The  most  interesting  and  curious  feature  of  this  doctrine 
is  its  implied  disjunction  of  the  real  and  the  existent.  With 
Aristotle  and  with  most  of  his  successors  these  two  concepts 
are  co-extensive.  And  in  a  system  of  thought  which  identi- 
fies reality  with  the  whole  of  the  universe,1  it  is  difficult  to 
see  how  co-extension  can  be  avoided.  Nevertheless  Mr. 
Bradley  expressly  discriminates  them,  and  the  reason  is 
rather  a  subtle  one.  It  arises  from  the  existence  of  appear- 
ances. These,  as  we  are  told  again  and  again,  are  not  real. 
But  this  is  true  of  them  only  qua  appearance;  from  an 
absolute  standpoint  the  universe  is  nothing  apart  from  its 
appearances;  they  are  the  stuff  of  which  it  is  made.  "All 
is  appearance,  and  no  appearance,  or  any  combination  of 
these,  is  the  same  as  Reality"  ;  but  at  the  same  time,  "the 
Absolute  is  its  appearances,  it  really  is  all  and  every  one  of 
them"  (p.  486). 

Now  it  is  impossible  to  deny  being  of  some  sort  to  ap- 
pearances qua  mere  appearance.  Otherwise  they  could  not 
even  maintain  their  self-contradictory  and  unreal  character. 
In  order  to  be  described  at  all  they  must  at  least  have  ex- 
istence as  unrealities.  But  beside  this  they  have  also  a  real 
existence,  though  not  in  a  sense  in  which  they  can  properly 
be  described  as  appearance ;  their  real  existence  is  only  as 
"transmuted,"  absorbed  and  digested  in  the  Absolute — the 
sense  in  which  "appearance  must  belong  to  reality,"  and  so 
"  be  concordant  and  other  than  it  seems"  (p.  140). 

If  this  position  may  be  interpreted,  it  means  that  the 
seeming  which  we  define  as  appearance  is  a  mere  function, 

1  I  do  not  recall  any  passage  where  Mr.  Bradley  states  this  identity;  but  he 
uses,  with  apparent  indifference,  the  same  expressions  to  qualify  "  Reality,"  the 
"  Whole,"  and  the  "Absolute,"  and  I  cannot  discern  any  distinction  unless  it  be 
that  indicated  in  the  paragraph  above.  See  especially  chap,  xxvii  of  Appearance 
and  Reality. 


40  THE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  [40 

attribute  or  predicate  of  that  Reality  for  the  sake  of  which 
the  apparently  real  is  ostracized.  Now  that  real  Reality 
must  exist,  but  the  extension  of  'existence'  cannot  be  con- 
fined to  it  because  of  the  seeming  existence,  or  existence- 
in-seeming,  of  appearances.  Existence,  therefore,  is  not 
heteronymous  with  reality ;  it  is  a  category  of  all  reality, 
but  it  is  also  "a  form  of  the  appearance  of  the  Real"  (p. 
400).  Elsewhere  Mr.  Bradley  is  inclined  to  deny  altogether 
any  existence  to  appearances  as  such,  by  reason  of  "  the 
saving  distinction  that  to  have  existence  need  not  mean  to 
exist"  (p..  379).  But  the  doctrine  is  sufficiently  unintelli- 
gible without  this  added  burden. 
V  Briefly  to  recapitulate :  Mr.  Bradley  recognizes  a  world  of 
self-contradictory  and  unreal  appearances  which  "  represent, 
but  are  not,  reality."  In  striving  for  knowledge  we  are  for- 
ever grasping  after  a  reality  which  shall  transcend  and  elimi- 
nate these  contradictory  appearances,  and  this  reality  is  the 
ideal  subject  of  all  our  judgments  and  the  ideal  extension  of 
whatever  degree  of  reality  we  know.  But  because  all  the 
content  and  substance  of  our  judgments  must  belong  to  the 
world  of  appearance,  this  reality  must  ever  remain  for  us  an 
ideal ;  or,  if  real  at  all,  only  relatively  so.  And  since  this  is 
the  case,  and  since  the  process  is  bound  to  be  infinite,  each 
transmutation  of  contradiction  demanding  in  turn  a  higher 
transmutation,  we  are  compelled  to  infer  some  final  Reality 
within  which  a  final  transmutation  is  eternally  achieved. 
And  this  is  the  Absolute.  It  alone  is  a  real  that  exists.  But 
— and  here  is  the  miracle  ! — its  existence  is  in  the  very  form 
and  guise  of  appearance  and  contradiction,  and  hence  it  is 
that  these,  also,  come  to  be. 

12.  Whatever  may  be  the  advantages  of  this  theory,  it  is 
in  danger  of  falling  into  that  solipsism  of  the  logician  which 
is  the  chief  pitfall  of  systems  of  thought  that  try  to  span  the 
epistemologist's  chasm  by  dint  of  dialectic.     Even  if  all  my 


4In  THE  OBJECT  OF  KNOWLEDGE  41 

experience  and  all  my  knowledge  be  made  a  predicate  of  an 
ideal  reality  (which  is  yet  but  falsely  real),  so  that  I  am 
forced  to  infer  an  absolute  Reality  within  which  mine,  false 
and  contradictory,  must  exist  transfused  and  absorbed,  the 
fact  remains  none  the  less  painfully  bare  that  for  me  all  that 
seems  true  is  a  lie.  Nor  does  it  help  one  whit  that  I  am  told 
that  my  reality  is  bound  to  exist  relatively  and  in  a  degree, 
for  in  the  end  all  its  existence  is  delusive  appearance  of  the 
Absolute.  Ever  to  exist  as  real  Reality  it  must  be  transmuted 
in  a  manner  and  to  a  semblance  of  which  I  can  have  no 
faintest  hint.1  My  knowledge  is  better  than  that  of  the 
solipsist,  confined  to  his  fleeting  perceptions,  only  in  that  I 
know  that  my  knowledge  is  wholly  false,  whereas  he  may 
hope,  though  he  may  never  be  sure,  that  his  eyes  see  true. 

This  pitfall  seems  to  be  avoided  by  an  appeal  to  experi- 
ence. The  self,  Mr.  Bradley  argues,  is  merely  an  incident  in 
the  totality  of  known  things,  and  consequently  these  things 
are  mine  only  incidentally.  The  world  I  experience  is  really 
not  my  world  at  all — at  least  not  with  any  warmth  in  the 
possessive.  It  is  true  that  the  world  "  appears  in  my  expe- 
rience, and  so  far  as  it  exists  there,  is  my  state  of  mind,"  and 
even  the  Absolute,  or  God  himself,  is  in  a  sense  "  my  state"  ; 
but  "  my  experience  is  not  the  whole  world"  (p.  260). 

It  is  doubtless  true  that  the  self  is  a  mere  incident  among 
the  incidents  that  go  to  make  up  the  world,  but  it  does  not 
follow  that  this  fact  releases  the  possessive  from  its  implica- 
tion of  particularity.  We  may  abstract  all  the  elements  that 
relate  the  world  experienced  to  a  self  experiencing  it,  and 
still  we  have  a  world  as  residuum ;  and  the  article  is  just  as 

1  Mr.  Bradley  never  tires  of  assuring  us  that  both  the  world  of  appearances  and 
their  final  transmutation  are  inexplicable.  In  §  v  of  the  Appendix  he  explains 
that  the  "  Why  "  and  "  How  "  are  not  to  be  required  of  him;  that  all  he  is  called 
upon  to  show  is  that  the  unintelligibility  of  the  Absolute  is  ultimate  and  is  fact. 
The  unintelligibility  is  likely  to  be  conceded,  but  the  question  still  remains 
whether  such  an  Absolute  is  the  fact. 


42  THE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  \a2 

much  a  particularization  of  this  world  as  was  the  possessive. 
In  other  words,  the  world  of  which  my  experience  is  the 
experience  can  never  be  or  mean  anything  other  than  what 
it  is  and  means  in  the  particular  experience  from  which  it  is 
left  as  residuum  after  the  'self  and  the  'mine'  have  been 
abstracted.  It  is  still  a  solipsistic  world,  even  if  it  happen  to 
be  the  only  world  that  actually  is. 

But  we  have  it  that  the  Absolute  itself  is  in  some  sense 
"  my  state"  ;  and  this  is  certainly  bound  to  carry  us  beyond 
any  narrow  self-inclusion.  For  it  is  definitively  sure  that  the 
Absolute  can  never  be,  or  be  in,  my  states  just  as  it  is :  that 
would  deny  the  gist  of  the  whole  sermon,  which  only  infers 
the  existence  of  an  Absolute  because  the  self-contradictions 
of  my  states  demand  it  as  an 'other*  to  their  incomplete- 
ness. It  is  plain  that  there  is  a  world  real  in  a  different 
sense  from  that  in  which  my  world  is  real,  and  it  must  be 
the  world  of  absolute  Reality.  But  if  it  is  never  present  to 
us  except  as  other  than  it  really  is,  what  can  we  know  of  it 
beyond  the  bare  fact  of  its  existence?  We  know  that  it 
must  be  experience,  Mr.  Bradley  answers ;  x  and  this  is  the 
strangest  inconsequence  in  his  whole  theory.  For  to  begin 
with,  all  the  characteristics  by  which  we  identify  experience, 
all  its  forms,  qualities  and  contents,  and  even  the  categories 
of  thought,  are  damned  as  false  apparitions.  The  world 
that  we  really  experience  is  made  a  shadow-land  devoid 
of  even  the  ghostly  truths  of  Plato's  cave.  To  be  sure,  all  its 
color  and  sound  and  substance  somehow  exist  in  the  Abso- 
lute, but  only  as  so  unrecognizably  transformed  that  it  is 
hardly  fair  to  call  them  the  same.  And  if  this  is  true  of 
every  detail  of  experience,  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  it  can  fail 
to  be  true  of  the  whole ;  for  assuredly  experience  taken  as  a 
whole  is  nothing  apart  from  the  details  which  constitute  its 
content. 

1  Chapter  xxvii. 


.3]  THE  OBJECT  OF  KNOWLEDGE  43 

There  is,  however,  a  second  argument  and  a  second 
appeal  to  experience  by  which  Mr.  Bradley  seems  to  avert 
from  his  position  the  charge  of  solipsism.  This  is  the 
theory  of  an  immediate  empirical  knowledge  of  Reality,  or, 
as  he  would  choose,  contact  with  it.  "  My  way  of  contact 
with  Reality  is  through  a  limited  aperture.  For  I  cannot  get 
at  it  directly  except  through  the  felt  •  this',  and  our  immedi- 
ate interchange  and  transfluence  takes  place  through  one 
small  opening.  Everything  beyond,  though  not  less  real,  is 
an  expansion  of  the  common  essence  which  we  feel  burn- 
ingly  in  this  one  focus.  And  so  in  the  end,  to  know  the 
Universe,  we  must  fall  back  upon  our  personal  experience 
and  sensation"  (p.  260). 

The  theory  here  set  forth  is  developed  most  fully  in  the 
earlier  chapters  of  The  Principles  of  Logic.  There  we  are 
also  told  that  the  reality  which  is  the  ultimate  subject  of  all 
judgment  is  "  the  real  which  appears  in  perception  "  (p.  28). 
And  what  is  meant  is  that  it  is  that  real  which  is  immedi- 
ately and  empirically  given,  the  bare  and  proximate  fact. 
It  is  this  which  constitutes  our  point  of  contact  with  Reality. 

There  are  ambiguities  in  the  word  '  appear '  which  ought 
to  be  indicated  before  we  can  judge  of  the  value  and  validity 
of  a  contact  with  reality  which  is  merely  its  appearance. 
We  may  speak  of  a  thing  as  appearing  to  be  what  it  really 
is  not,  and  this  is  'mere  appearance'.  Or  we  may  mean 
that  it  appears  as  it  really  is,  and  this  is  the  '  true  appear- 
ance'  of  anything.  Now  when  Mr.  Bradley  tells  us  that 
the  real  appears  in  perception,  we  must  not  understand  him 
to  refer  to  a  true  appearance.  He  is  talking  about  a  mere 
illusory  appearance.  "  The  real  which  appears  in  percep- 
tion is  not  identical  with  the  real  just  as  it  appears  there " 
(p.  70).  A  distinction  must  be  made  between  the  real  as 
it  appears,  or  as  it  exists  for  me,  and  the  real  which  appears, 
or  as  it  exists  in  itself.     The  two  can  never  coincide.     They 


44  TEE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  [44 

are  not  identical  and  they  cannot  even  be  alike.  We  are 
expressly  assured  on  this  point.  "  Reality  we  divined  to  be 
self-existent,  substantial  and  individual:  but,  as  it  appears 
in  presentation,  it  is  none  of  these.  The  content  through- 
out is  infected  with  relativity,  and  adjectival  in  itself,  the 
whole  of  its  elements  are  also  adjectival.  Though  given  as 
fact,  every  part  is  given  as  existing  by  reference  to  something 
else.  The  mere  perpetual  disappearance  in  time  of  the 
given  appearance  is  itself  the  negation  of  its  claim  to  self- 
existence.  And  again,  if  we  take  it  while  it  appears,  its 
limits  are  never  secured  from  the  inroads  of  unreality.  In 
space  or  in  time  its  outside  is  made  fact  solely  by  relation 
to  what  is  beyond"  (p.  70). 

The  effort  to  attain  Reality  by  means  of  immediate  con- 
tact is  self-convicted.  All  that  it  gives  us  is  an  appearance 
avowedly  untrue  to  what  it  represents.  On  its  "  outside  " 
alone  may  it  somehow  be  real.  But  Reality  is  only  the  more 
hopelessly  cut  off  from  us. 

Mr.  Bradley's  theory  resolves  itself  into  a  final  dualism. 
The  real  in  perception  and  the  reality  in  ideal  construction 
are  appearance.  But  as  appearance  they  are  adjectival  and 
compel  the  assumption  of  a  real  Real  and  a  real  Reality  of 
which  they  are  the  imperfect  truth.  The  reality  which  is 
ostensibly  the  subject  of  judgment  must  be,  I  take  it,  that 
pseudo-reality  which  is  real  for  me;  but  the  reality  which  is 
the  ultimate  subject  of  all  judgment,  is  rather  that  other 
Reality  upon  which  my  reality  depends  as  an  adjective,  and 
which,  as  the  Real,  one  might  say  barely  kisses  its  ghostly 
counterpart  in  my  perception.  The  theory  differs  from 
solipsism  only  in  two  respects.  It  affirms  the  existence  of 
an  Absolute  within  which  our  experience  is  in  some  inex- 
plicable way  transmuted ;  and  it  affirms  that  this  experience 
must  be  so  transmuted  because  all  its  content  is  known  to 
be  false  and  contradictory. 


45]  THE  OBJECT  OF  KNOWLEDGE  45 

13.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  this  brief  examination  of  Mr. 
Bradley's  doctrine  has  been  no.t  unprofitable.  It  has  aimed 
to  show  the  ambiguities  and  subtle  evasions  that  are  apt  to 
result  from  a  dialectical  procedure.  Such  a  procedure 
defines  reality  conceptually  rather  than  in  terms  of  things 
and  qualities,  and  discredits  fact  for  the  sake  of  theoretical 
consistency.  What  we  want  is  not  a  world  of  Platonic  Ideas 
or  of  Spinozistic  Eternal  Verities,  nor  yet  a  Bradleyan  Abso- 
lute, but  rather  a  meaning  in  our  reality,  carnal  and  fleshly 
though  it  may  be.  And  if  our  reality  turn  out  to  be  founded 
in  contradiction,  it  is  the  meaning  of  the  contradictions  that 
interests  us,  for  it  is  in  these  that  we  live. 

As  for  terminology,  it  appears  to  me  that  '  real '  and 
'  unreal '  are  too  valuable  in  the  description  of  the  empirical 
world  to  be  subjected  to  the  varied  ambiguities  of  this 
dialectic.  In  the  end  all  that  is  may  be  real,  but  ordinarily 
we  do  not  so  mean.  Let  us  therefore  continue  to  speak  of 
significant  being  as  the  real ;  and  as  the  unreal,  of  that 
which  is  merely  suggestive.  And  for  metaphysical  Reality, 
let  us  return  to  the  usage  of  early  philosophy  and  speak  of 
the  Existent. 


CHAPTER  IV 

EXPLANATION  AND  DESCRIPTION 

14.  FEW  terms  used  in  metaphysical  and  scientific  dis- 
cussions seem  at  first  sight  so  thoroughly  unambiguous  as 
'  explanation.'  When  we  ask  for  an  explanation  of  any- 
thing there  is  seldom  any  halting  self-questioning  as  to  just 
what  we  mean  or  desire.  We  feel  sure  that  we  shall  recog- 
nize the  satisfaction  of  our  demand  when  it  comes.  And 
this  is  due  to  the  fact  that  explanation  is  really  a  psychical 
matter:  it  is  a  satisfaction  of  intellectual  needs,  and  it  is 
adequate  whenever  a  particular  need  is  met.  Of  course 
such  needs  vary,  and  consequently  the  meaning  of  the  term 
must  vary, — that  is,  its  objective  meaning;  subjectively  it  is 
always  a  satisfaction,  a  state  of  mind,  but  objectively  an 
explanation  may  be  by  classifications,  identities,  or  causes, 
according  to  the  form  of  the  thought-need  which  is  to  be 
satisfied,  by  fact  or  representation,  according  to  the  kind  of 
knowledge  that  is  conveyed.  What  is  immediately  or  in- 
tuitively known  is  self-explanatory ;  what  is  known  only 
representatively  is  explained  vicariously,  the  satisfaction 
being  produced  by  something  other  than  the  object  of  actual 
interest.  Again,  we  may  wish  to  understand  what  a  thing  is 
in  itself  or  we  may  wish  to  understand  it  through  its  causes. 
We  thus  have  explanation  on  the  principle  of  identity  and 
on  that  of  causality.  But  very  often  we  mean  by  explana- 
tion, causal  explanation  only;  for  explanation  on  the  prin- 
ciple of  identity  we  are  apt  to  use  the  term  '  description.' 
The  two  terms  are  largely  interchangeable ;  each  has  a 
46  [46 


47 -]  EXPLANATION  AND  DESCRIPTION  47 

broader  and  a  narrower  meaning,  but  there  is  no  clear  de- 
marcation. Perhaps  we  come  nearest  to  usage  if  we,  say- 
that  explanation  may  indicate  (1)  self-explanation — and  in 
this  sense  it  has  no  connection  with  description;  (2)  de- 
scriptive explanation,  which  includes  all  definitive  and 
classificatory  descriptions;  and  (3)  causal  description. 
These  uses  will  be  considered  in  detail. 

15.  Whatever  is  self-explanatory  is  immediately  known. 
In  the  chapter  on  the  meaning  of  knowledge,  both  perceptual 
intuition  and  rational  insight  were  defined  as  types  of  knowl- 
edge that  carry  their  own  satisfaction.  They  offer  not  only 
the  feeling  of  certitude  which  is  the  characteristic  mark  of 
knowledge  as  distinguished  from  mere  belief,  but  also  that 
final  quiescence  of  the  demand  to  know  which  may  be  taken 
as  the  end  and  realization  of  adequate  explanation.  We  may 
almost  say  that  the  only  adequate  explanation  must  be  self- 
explanation,  for  it  alone  requires  nothing  beyond  the  given 
content  of  thought  or  perception  to  yield  that  satisfaction  of 
certitude  which  is  the  meeting-point  of  the  desire  to  know 
and  its  fulfillment.  Possibly  the  complete  satisfaction  of  this 
desire  is  rather  to  be  described  as  the  annihilation  of  it:  our 
knowledge  is  perfect  only  when  we  cease  to  be  curious.  But 
this  is  viewing  knowledge  wholly  in  its  psychical  aspect; 
from  a  cosmical  point  of  view,  the  moment  of  our  most  ab- 
solute certitude  may  be  the  moment  of  our  greatest  ignor- 
ance. Complete  intelligibility,  in  other  words,  may  mean  not 
so  much  ultimate  insight  into  truth,  as  want  of  perception  of 
anything  to  be  accounted  for.  And  this  truism  of  common 
experience  holds  within  the  whole  range  of  a  relative  and 
finite  knowledge  of  the  world. 

It  will  readily  be  seen  that  the  attitude  here  taken  makes 
psychical  feeling  the  ultimate  content  of  all  our  knowledge 
as  well  as  of  all  objective  experience.  And  this  is  inevitable 
so  long  as  we   understand  'content'  in  its  literal  meaning. 


48  THE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  I  48 

As  has  hitherto  been  asserted,  abstract  and  analyze  as  we 
may,  we  cannot  do  away  with  the  particularity  of  experience 
nor  get  non-experiential  elements  within  it.  Even  if  we  sup- 
pose that  our  immediate  knowledge  of  things  implies  a  trans- 
conscious  being  of  those  things,  we  cannot  say  of  this  being 
that  it  is  experienced,  and  we  can  say  that  our  consciousness 
contains  all  that  we  know  or  can  know  of  the  things,  includ- 
ing the  implication  of  their  trans-conscious  being.  We  are 
always  forced  to  describe  our  experience  as  organized  in 
consciousness  and  composed  only  of  conscious  states — that 
is,  if  we  use  '  consciousness'  in  the  broadest  sense.  For  my 
own  part,  the  word  too  fatally  implies  individuation  and 
'mental  states'  to  seem  valuable  as  designation  of  the  sum- 
mum  genus  of  experience.  '  Feeling '  is  the  word  that  we 
instinctively  use  when  we  wish  to  describe  elemental  and 
unorganized  experience ;  but  it,  too,  is  unfortunate  in  that 
it  almost  inevitably  carries  the  notion  of  pure  subjectivity. 
Possibly  all  elemental  experience  is  purely  subjective,  but 
this  is  not  a  priori  apparent.  Perhaps  the  nearest  that  we 
come  to  the  meaning  required  is  in  the  word  '  aesthetic' 
Though,  in  English,  narrowed  to  the  one  province  of  experi- 
ence of  the  beautiful,  it  is  a  word  in  which  the  objective  and 
subjective  references  are  so  indistinguishably  interwrought 
that  it  seems  to  designate  a  somewhat  which  is  neither  ob- 
jective nor  subjective,  but  just  the  essential  content  of  the 
experience.  And  this  is  as  good  description  as  we  can  give. 
1 6.  But  if  it  is  true  that  the  summum  genus  of  all  knowl- 
edge and  all  experience  is  feeling,  does  not  this  necessitate 
pan-psychism?  Supposing  that  we  are  finally  forced  to  a 
logical  construction  of  the  world  in  accordance  with  the 
necessities  of  the  forms  of  thought  and  are  bound  to  analyze 
it  into  the  psychical  elements  of  our  experience,  have  we 
any  right  to  entertain  a  notion  of  possible  other  worlds  than 
ours,  or   of  chaoses,  or  of  existences  of  any  sort,  unknown 


49J  EXPLANATION  AND  DESCRIPTION  49 

and  unknowable  to  us,  yet  not  to  be  left  out  of  account  in 
our  estimate  of  probabilities?  If  all  we  can  grasp  is  psychi- 
cal, can  we  think  or  mean  anything  that  is  not  so? 

Commonly  this  question  is  answered  in  the  negative. 
We  cannot  even  speak  of  a  chaos,  much  less  a  world,  with- 
out entering  into  that  very  realm  of  logic  and  psychology 
which  our  effort  to  apprehend  trans-experiential  being 
designs  to  avoid ;  and  it  is  nonsense  to  treat  what  is  literally 
unmentionable  as  if  it  were  possible.  This  is  the  orthodox 
view. 

But  I  have  one  point  in  answer.  We  do  recognize  the 
finiteness  of  the  psychical  self,  and  we  do  recognize  that  this 
self  and  all  its  body  of  knowledge  is  limited  and  circum- 
scribed by  a  world  which  exceeds  it.  Whether  our  theory 
of  the  universe  be  based  upon  the  psychical  necessity  of  the 
perceptually  given  or  upon  the  psychical  necessity  of  logical 
constructions,  we  are  bound  to  admit  some  form  of  transcen- 
sion  of  our  psychical  nature,  some  existence  other  than  ours 
or  that  of  our  thought.  And  so  admitting,  it  is  absurd  to 
say  that  all  the  possibilities  of  that  other  existence  are  ex- 
hausted within  the  limits  of  our  poor  finite  conception.  It 
is  doubtless  true  that  we  can  only  make  use  in  our  talking 
and  our  thinking  of  what  stock  of  stuff  experience  furnishes 
us;  but  because  we  can  only  think  of  the  universe  as  one, 
does  not  make  it  one, — indeed,  'it'  may  not  be  a  universe 
at  all, — and  because  our  experience  is  contained  within  the 
universe,  we  are  not  compelled  to  infer  that  the  whole  must 
be  experience.  All  arguments  to  such  effect  are  but  repeti- 
tions of  Anselm's  proof  that  God  exists,  and  they  are  guilty 
of  the  same  fallacy.  It  is  reasonably  certain  that  they  carry 
conviction  only  to  minds  too  much  educated  in  philosophy.1 

1  If  this  position  is  tenable,  it  will  be  seen  that  the  metaphysician  should  be  on 
special  guard  with  the  term  •  explanation.'  He  is  in  danger  of  confusing  what 
can  only  be  an  explanation  of  human  experience  with  the  ontological  explanation 


j0  THE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  [50 

The  grounds  for  the  assertion  of  any  trans-experiential 
existences,  or  for  any  qualification  of  them,  must  lie  within 
the  summum  genus  of  experience,  and  so  be  psychical.  But 
at  the  same  time  an  essential  characteristic  of  all  experience 
is  recognition  of  its  own  limitation  by  somewhat  other  than 
itself.  This,  I  take  it,  is  empirical  fact.  The  only  question 
is,  whether  that  which  limits  our  experience  is  bound  to  be, 
as  well  as  to  be  conceived,  like  it  in  kind.1 

This  question  rests  upon  the  relation  of  a  content  of 
knowledge  to  its  meaning.  What  is  the  limit  of  the  signifi- 
cance of  symbols?  In  all  experience  that  is  self-explanatory, 
in  all  immediate  knowledge,  content  and  meaning  are  iden- 

of  the  world.  So  long  as  we  believe  that  human  experience  and  human  knowl- 
edge comprise  but  a  merest  islet  in  some  universal  sea  of  existences,  it  is  hardly 
rational  to  attempt  humanly  to  confine  that  sea.  And  it  might  not  prove  an 
avoidance  of  modesty  if  every  metaphysical  construction  were  advanced  with 
some  such  reservation. 

1  The  Hegelian  dialectical  attempt  to  overcome  the  constraint  of  the  sense  of 
limitation  by  calling  it  a  "  self-limitation  "  affords  an  excellent  example  of  a  curi- 
ously subtle  and  characteristically  Hegelian  fallacy.  It  seems  true  that  self- 
consciousness  is,  as  this  doctrine  teaches,  a  result  of  retroaction — "  self  thrown 
back  upon  self  in  consequence  of  contact  with  not-self,"  to  put  it  in  the  orthodox 
vocabulary — and  again,  it  appears  certain  that  the  general  widening  of  human 
experience  in  the  advance  of  knowledge  is  accurately  if  not  very  elegantly  defined 
by  the  "  constant  synthesis  of  self  and  not-self  into  a  higher  unity."  But  when  it 
comes  to  asserting  that  this  process  is  the  secret  of  the  universe,  the  gist  of  reality 
and  the  soul  of  the  Absolute,  we  have  merely  a  huge  hypostatization,  a  metaphor, 
for  which  there  is  no  more  warrant  than  for  asserting  that  the  universe  is  all  apple 
jelly,  or  an  appetite  for  hay,  or  any  other  combination  of  experiential  elements. 
The  process  is  nothing  but  an  aspect  of  human  experience  capable  of  dialectical 
description.  To  seize  upon  it,  crystallize  it  by  dint  of  dialectic,  and  then  find  in 
it  an  exact  mirror  of  all  that  is  possible,  is  merely  to  abandon  the  world  of  actual 
experience  for  the  sake  of  philosophizing  about  its  ghost,  forgetting  that  we  are 
always  in  the  midst  of  the  process  itself  and  that  it  is  nothing  but  logical  jargon 
apart  from  the  flow  and  play  of  fact.  Made  absolute  the  process  really  has  noth- 
ing to  work  upon,  and  is  resolved  into  a  frantically  aimless  activity  or  else  into  a 
sort  of  everlasting  self-digestion;  but  in  each  case  the  "Absolute"  that  is  served 
up  is  about  as  substantial  as  would  be  a  cake  whose  recipe  ignores  flour,  sugar 
and  spices. 


c  i  ]  EXPLANA  TION  AND  DESCRIPTION  5  \ 

tical.  But  the  reverse  is  true  of  representative  knowledge. 
In  such  knowledge  it  is  a  peculiarity  of  the  knowing  state 
that  it  distinguishes  itself  and  all  its  content  from  what  it 
stands  for.  It  even  discriminates  in  what  it  stands  for  a 
meaning  of  the  object  as  significant  to  the  knowledge  itself 
and  a  meaning  of  it  as  a  merely  existent  something  or  other; 
that  is,  it  discriminates  a  utility  from  the  subject  to  which 
the  utility  belongs.  Now  the  utility,  of  course,  is  nought  if 
it  cannot  be  realized  in  experience,  but  this  is  not  so  certainly 
true  of  the  existence  of  the  subject. 

Perhaps  the  whole  problem  may  be  briefly  stated  thus : 
The  human  mind  is  framed  to  know  those  aspects  of  exist- 
ence which  are  useful  and  so  significant  to  the  human 
organism.  If  this  is  so,  do  the  types  of  existence  that  it  can 
know  include  all  possible  types  of  existence?  Because  what 
we  call  experience  exhausts  all  possible  significance  in  the 
world  for  us,  must  the  whole  world  be  experience?  Or  may 
there  not  be  in  the  universe,  perhaps  as  its  essential  com- 
ponent, some  sort  of  being  that  to  the  human  mind  is  alto- 
gether unknowable  because  altogether  dross  to  human  need? 
Certainly  this  seems  not  impossible. 

Knowledge  distinguishes  its  own  existence  as  a  psychical 
fact  from  other  existences.  It  even  makes  its  psychical 
existence  subordinate  to  other  existences  and  so  subordi- 
nates itself  to  what  it  knows.  But  this  is  only  because  it 
distinguishes  in  what  it  knows  the  content  from  the  meaning 
and  in  the  meaning  the  significance  from  the  subject.  Only 
the  significance  falls  necessarily  under  the  ordo  cognitionis ; 
the  subject  follows  strictly  the  ordo  naturae.  Knowledge 
recognizes  itself  as  a  part  of  something,  but  the  part  ought 
not  endeavor  to  swallow  the  whole.  Of  course  this  relation 
is  puzzling,  but  it  is  only  the  puzzle  of  all  representative 
knowledge  and  of  the  kind  of  explanation  that  such  knowl  - 
edge  offers. 


5  2  THE  PR  OBLEM  OF  ME  TA  PH  YSICS  [  5  2 

17.  As  ordinarily  used  the  term  'explanation'  means 
only  vicarious  explanation  or  description.  This  is  the  type 
of  explanation  that  we  make  use  of  in  the  ideal  extension  of 
our  knowledge,  and  it  always  means  the  accounting  for  one 
thing  by  something  else  adduced  as  its  ground,  cause  or 
facsimile.  If  stress  be  laid  upon  its  passive  aspect,  as  mere 
description, — for 'explanation '  seems  to  convey  some  hint 
of  dynamogenesis  in  thought, — it  is  simply  the  designation 
of  one  thing  in  terms  of  another,  an  equating  of  the  content 
of  the  description  with  the  thing  described.  But  in  any  case 
it  is  a  substitution  of  one  experience  for  another;  or,  per- 
haps, a  filling  out  of  the  given  with  ideal  experience — a 
sense  in  which  every  perception  is  a  sort  of  explanation. 
Theoretically  any  object  may  be  adequately  explained ;  but 
a  perfect  explanation  could  be  only  by  final  insight  into  its 
real  nature.  Such  insight  is  possible  to  an  infinite  intuition 
alone,  and  with  this  the  explanation  ceases  to  be  description 
and  becomes  realization.  Practically,  however,  description 
may  meet  all  our  needs ;  that  is  to  say,  we  may  acquire 
such  extension  of  our  given  nucleus  of  knowledge  of  an 
object  as  will  satisfy  our  curiosity  about  it.  The  mind  does 
not  commonly  demand  an  intuition  of  the  universe,  but  only 
the  location  of  events  amid  attendant  and  similar  events.  It 
requires  a  feeling  of  orientation  and  trend  for  its  content- 
ment, and  this  may  be  attained  either  by  the  slow  and 
laborious  filling  out  of  the  given  itself— that  is,  by  the 
experience  of  a  real  series  of  events — or  else  by  symbolic 
knowledge  and  descriptive  representation. 

Something  has  already  been  said  concerning  the  nature 
of  the  symbol  and  the  relation  of  content  and  meaning.  In 
resuming  this  topic,  a  figure  may  render  clearer  certain 
necessary  distinctions.  We  may  call  those  images,  or 
sensuous  casts,  gotten  by  immediate  abstraction  from  an 
object,   hieroglyphical    symbols.     In    point    of   utility   they 


c  3  ]  EXPLANA  TION  A  ND  DESCRTP  TION  5  3 

represent  the  lowest  order  of  symbol  and  in  point  of  intel- 
ligibility the  highest.  They  are  the  most  inutile  because 
the  most  laborious  psychically,  and  the  most  intelligible  be- 
cause nearest  akin  to  the  real  object.  The  conceptual  or 
class  image,  the  imaginative  symbol  of  the  universal  and 
generic,  bears  much  the  same  relation  to  the  sensuous  cast 
that  the  hieratic  character  in  writing  bears  to  the  hiero- 
glyphic. It  is  an  abstraction  from  an  abstraction,  a  cast 
from  a  cast,  with  more  or  less  elimination  of  detail ;  and  it 
is  distinguished  most  of  all  by  the  extension  of  its  meaning 
to  include  more  than  one  individual  or  fact.  Finally  we 
have  the  pure  symbol  the  meaning  of  which  is  fixed  by  con- 
vention, and  not  by  any  internal  necessity  in  the  symbol 
itself.  It  may  be  called  the  alphabetical  or  algebraic  sym- 
bol. Ultimately  substitution  of  the  experience  that  it  stands 
for  is  the  only  exposition  of  the  meaning  of  any  symbol,  but 
practically  and  for  expediency's  sake,  we  need  substitute 
only  in  our  conclusions.  It  will  be  seen  that  in  all  descrip- 
tive explanation  the  relation  of  the  symbolic  content  to  its 
meaning  is  uncertain  and  subject  to  considerable  variation 
in  intelligibility. 

Naturally,  the  first  question  that  occurs  in  this  connection 
is,  how  can  one  thing  represent  another  even  in  case  the  two 
are  alike,  since  the  difference  which  makes  them  two  is  pre- 
served? But  especially,  how  can  we  mean  anything  of 
which  we  are  not  conscious?  We  certainly  are  conscious  of 
meanings  apart  from  the  words  that  express  them.  Must  it 
not  be  so  with  all  symbols,  must  not  the  meaning  exist  in 
consciousness  in  some  sense  with  all  intelligent  use  of  sym- 
bols? This  question  is  one  of  considerable  importance, 
especially  in  any  discussion  of  the  validity  of  our  thought- 
syntheses  and  ratiocinative  processes.  If  in  our  thinking  we 
are  merely  juggling  with  signs,  or  are  in  danger  of  this,  we 
want  to  know  it.     But  the  question  is  for  psychology  rather 


5  4  THE  PR  OBLEM  OF  ME  TA  PHYSICS  [54 

than  for  metaphysics  to  solve.  What  is  of  metaphysical, 
and  practical,  interest  is  that  many  facts  of  consciousness  do 
mean  something  altogether  outside  of  consciousness  at  the 
time.     And  this  is  too  self-evident  to  be  questioned. 

Now  we  call  these  meanings  of  our  conscious  states  either 
realities  or  possibilities ;  and  thereby  we  mean  real  and 
possible  existences,  which  we  distinguish  from  one  another  by 
the  degree  of  our  certitude  with  regard  to  them.  Of  course  we 
may  err  in  our  judgments,  but  that  affects  the  truth  of  our 
ideal  representation,  not  the  fact  for  which  it  stands.  Mr. 
Bradley  tells  us  that  all  possibilities  must  be  real  possibili- 
ties,1 and  in  one  sense  this  is  true,  for  there  can  be  no  grada- 
tions between  the  real  and  the  impossible  in  actual  exist- 
ence. But  it  may  be  questioned  whether  the  only  meaning 
of  '  possible '  is  not  as  description  of  some  grade  of  knowl- 
edge or  of  belief  rather  than  of  fact.  And  in  that  case, 
what  are  the  limits  that  we  must  set  upon  the  possible? 

What  I  understand  Mr.  Bradley  to  intend  by  his  assertion 
that  all  possibilities  must  be  real  is  not  denial  of  possi- 
bility to  whatever  is  non-existent,  but  assertion  that  every 
alternative  which  appeals  to  the  mind  as  possible  must  be 
based  upon  some  knowledge  of  reality,  in  short,  that  it  must 
be  conceivable.  I  am  quite  ready  to  agree  to  this,  only  it  is 
necessary  clearly  to  understand  what  is  meant  by  conceiva- 
ble. Certainly  in  this  sense  it  cannot  be  equivalent  to 
imageable.  We  can  image  a  cat-headed  goddess,  but  we  do 
not  therefore  conceive  Pasht  to  be  possible ;  on  the  other 
hand,  we  can  conceive  of  an  extension  of  the  spectrum  to 
include  more  colors  than  the  human  eye  can  see  or  the 
mind  image.  Again,  all  of  our  universal  notions  are  con- 
ceivable, yet  none  of  them  form  real  possibilities  to  any  ex- 
cept the  most  visionary  of  Platonists.  The  conceivability 
which  makes  a  real  possibility  is  clearly  not  the  conceiva- 

1  l^he  Principles  of  Logic,  book  I,  chap.  viii. 


55]  EXPLANATION  AND  DESCRIPTION  55 

bility  of  the  symbol  in  any  of  its  three  grades.  It  is  of  an 
altogether  different  sort,  a  conceivability  in  the  meaning.  I 
have  already  tried  to  distinguish  in  the  meaning  the  existent 
as  it  is,  the  fact  for  which  the  symbol  stands,  and  the  exist- 
ent as  we  mean  it  or  conceive  it  to  be.  Neither  of  these  can 
be  in  consciousness  along  with  the  symbol,  the  only  office  of 
which  is  to  represent  them  in  their  absence.  And  it  is  only 
in  the  case  of  the  existent  as  we  mean  it  that  we  can  talk  of 
its  possible  existence,  in  concession  to  a  possible  difference 
between  what  we  mean  and  what  actually  is,  that  is,  to 
possible  error  in  our  judgments.  It  is  of  the  meaning  as  we 
understand  it,  also,  that  we  can  say  it  must  be  conceivable 
in  order  to  be  possible. 

To  restate :  A  meaning  may  be  understood  ( 1 )  as  an  ex- 
istent somewhat  for  which  the  symbolical  content  stands  and 
of  which  it  may  or  may  not  be  true,  and  (2)  as  what  we 
mean  or  conceive  the  symbol  to  stand  for.  It  is  only  in  the 
latter  sense  that  we  may  speak  of  the  existent  as  possible, 
and  by  possible  we  mean  an  existent  that  is  really  possible 
or  conceivable.  Conceivability,  in  turn,  means  nothing 
more  than  capacity — hypothetical  or  actual — for  being 
elucidated  in  terms  of  the  reality  that  we  know. 

But  this  statement  must  be  modified  ;  for  we  can  dis- 
tinguish and  use  in  thought  elements  of  reality  which  if  we 
attempt  to  abstract  them  from  their  setting  leave  nothing 
behind,  as  for  example,  we  can  distinguish  triangularity  or 
redness  from  extension  and  can  use  these  conceptions  in 
thought,  while  at  the  same  time  we  cannot  abstract  the  ex- 
tension without  rendering  them  unimaginable.  Conse- 
quently, we  must  include  in  possible  existences  many  that 
are  inconceivable  in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  word,  since 
there  is  no  reason  for  restricting  our  notion  of  the  possible 
to  the  imageable.  We  know,  indeed,  that  all  representative 
knowledge   is   in  some  degree  untrue  to  the  object  that  it 


5 6  THE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  [56 

stands  for.  All  symbols  are  in  last  analysis  algebraic,  and 
we  must  not  deny  them  meaning  because  there  may  be 
some  whose  exact  value  cannot  in  the  nature  of  the  case  be 
known.  We  may,  therefore,  speak  of  a  four-dimensional 
space  as  possible,  though  it  is  not  imaginable,1  or  of  the 
existence  of  other  worlds  or  chaoses  than  such  as  could  be 
reconstructed  within  our  experience.  And  because  the 
ground  for  these  hypotheses  lies  within  our  experience  is  no 
reason  for  saying  that  the  hypothetical  existences  must  be 
like  it  in  kind.  Indeed  if  such  conceptions  as  mere  tri- 
angularity or  mere  redness  are  in  any  sense  legitimate,  we 
are  even  warranted  in  asserting  the  conceivability  of  facts 
that  must  be  different  in  kind  from  experience,  the  possi- 
bility of  wonder-lands  where  the  grin  may  outlast  the  cat. 
Finally,  it  should  not  be  overlooked  that  conceivability  and 
possibility  are  by  no  means  co-extensive  terms ;  many 
things  are  conceivable  which  are  felt  to  be,  and  since  possi- 
bility is  a  modifier  of  knowledge  only,  are  impossible.  And 
again,  conceivability  is  not  the  sole  subjective  mark  of  the 
possible,  for  in  order  to  be  possible  an  hypothesis  must  in 
some  sense  be  credible,  it  must  be  a  "  living  option." 

18.  From  the  foregoing  discussion  it  is  apparent  that  the 
symbolical  content  of  an  explanation  need  not  be  like  the 
object  explained.  It  must,  however,  be  equivalent  to  this 
object,  and  the  equivalence  is  a  likeness  of  another  sort — a 
likeness  of  function  in  thought.  This  likeness  in  function 
may  be  either  as  definitive  or  designative  description  or  as 
causal  description. 

Designation  is  properly  reproduction ;   that  is,  ultimately 

1 1  am  not  ready  to  agree  with  Lotze's  argument — Metaphysics,  book  2,  chap,  ii 
— that  four-dimensional  space  is  impossible  because  space  is  dimension;  for  it 
appears  to  me  that  we  can  clearly  discriminate  voluminousness,  or  cubic  dimen- 
sion, from  plane  extension,  and  if  so,  we  can  certainly  conceive  them  apart  from 
one  another;  and  if  we  can  thus  discriminate  dimensions  from  the  space  com- 
pounded of  them,  we  must  allow  the  possibility  of  more  than  one  kind  of  space. 


57]  EXPLANA  TION  AND  DESCRIPTION  5  j 

it  is  qualification  by  resemblance.  The  analysis  of  symbols 
shows  this,  for  symbols  are  intelligible  in  proportion  as  they 
reproduce  the  object  symbolized.  Of  course  a  perfect  repro- 
duction never  can  be  descriptive;  the  duality  implied  in 
'  likeness '  disappears  and  we  have  instead  identity.  But 
this  is  true  only  in  the  objective  world,  and  with  some  license. 
For  there  is  a  subjective  sameness  which  never  can  imply 
identity,  and  this  is  the  equivalence  of  objects  in  satisfying 
needs  and  fulfilling  purposes,  and  it  is  called  a  sameness 
because  of  the  persistence  of  function. 

To  put  the  matter  more  sharply,  there  are  two  kinds  of 
equivalence — an  equivalence  of  quality,  and  an  equivalence 
of  equality.  The  first  is  bound  to  lie  within  the  content  of 
the  objects  compared.  It  is  a  likeness  in  what  things  are. 
But  when  it  is  perfect,  when  there  is  absolute  sameness,  there 
is  no  longer  any  plurality  of  like  things;  there  is  simple 
identity  or  self-equivalence.  On  the  other  hand,  the  equiva- 
lence of  equality  is  an  equivalence  in  what  things  do,  and  it 
may  refer  either  to  objective  or  to  thought  efficiency. 

Equivalence  of  quality  is  equivalence  at  all  only  by  grace. 
As  mere  likeness  it  involves  two  factors  each  of  which  is 
qualitative.  First,  there  is  the  sameness  of  content  of  the 
like  things,  and  second,  their  plurality.  But  this  plurality  is 
not  a  quantitative  plurality.  It  is  the  ultimate  abstraction  of 
mere  difference  in  a  given  content,  and  while  it  may  be  de- 
scribed by  an  enumeration,  it  cannot  be  measured.  In 
essence  it  is  just  as  much  a  quality  of  the  given  as  color  or 
sound  or  form.  On  the  other  hand,  the  factor  of  sameness 
in  quality  may  be  quantitative — that  is,  there  may  be  '  much ' 
or  '  little'  of  it,  but  never  '  many '  or  '  few'.  It  is  a  quantity 
that  cannot  be  measured  by  any  unit  and  so  cannot  properly 
constitute  an  equivalence. 

In  order  to  define,  a  description  need  only  reproduce.  In 
order  to  explain  in  a  fuller  sense,  it  must  find  an  equivalence 


e  3  THE  rR  OBLEM  OF  ME  TAPH  YSICS  [58 

not  between  what  the  vicarious  object  and  the  explained 
object  are,  but  between  what  they  do.  Such  a  description 
must  be  by  some  type  of  correlation  ;  it  must  be  locative, 
determining  the  position  of  its  object  in  the  series  of  interest, 
and  it  must  designate  this  object  in  the  language  of  function. 
There  are  a  number  of  modes  in  which  we  describe  and 
explain  phenomena,  and  they  vary  according  to  the  elements 
in  the  phenomena  which  are  emphasized  and  according  to 
the  principle  upon  which  the  explanation  proceeds,  whether 
identity  or  causality.  Illustration  and  classification,  for  ex- 
ample, emphasize  sameness  of  content  or  quality.  Enumer- 
ation is  a  form  of  locative  designation  based  upon  difference 
of  quality.  Measurement  rests  also  upon  the  principle  of 
identity,  but  the  sameness  that  it  recognizes  is  a  quantitative 
sameness,  ultimately  an  equivalence  in  function  or  efficiency. 
The  principle  of  causality,  thus  introduced,  lies  at  the  basis 
of  all  explanation  by  reference  to  necessary  sequence,  the 
necessity  being  nothing  more  than  the  efficiency  of  the  hypo- 
thetical antecedents  to  cause  the  consequents.  Besides  effi- 
cient causation,  we  explain  according  to  final  or  teleological 
cause,  and  according  to  the  principle  of  sufficient  reason. 
It  is  with  these  modes  of  explanation  that  we  are  now  to  be 
concerned. 


CHAPTER  V 


THE    PRINCIPLE   OF   IDENTITY 


19.  Explanation  on  the  principle  of  identity  can  yield  a 
final  satisfaction  of  the  desire  to  know  only  in  the  self-iden- 
tical. For  such  explanation  must  mean  some  degree  of 
identification  of  that  which  is  to  be  explained  with  what  is 
already  known,  and  in  order  to  be  wholly  adequate,  that  is, 
in  order  entirely  to  eliminate  curiosity,  this  identification 
must  be  absolute.  Consequently  no  degree  of  resemblance 
or  sameness  that  is  less  than  absolute  can  give  that  incurious 
immediacy  of  knowledge  which  we  require  as  the  perfect  ex- 
planation of  the  world.  But  so  far  as  we  can  conceive,  per- 
fectly adequate  knowledge  of  the  world  is  possible  only  to  a 
unitary  intuition  of  it  as  wholly  self-contained  and  self  com- 
pleted. To  be  sure,  we  may  have  knowledge  adequate  to 
all  our  practical  needs  and  to  all  our  wider  human  interests 
— in  short,  whatever  knowledge  we  have  any  moral  or  intel- 
lectual right  to  require.  But  such  knowledge,  if  it  is  to  be 
knowledge  of  that  which  falls  without  the  bourne  of  direct 
human  experience,  must  be  representative,  and  it  can  consist 
only  of  some  sort  of  interpretation  of  the  unseen  into  the 
world-language  that  we  know.  Really  it  must  be  poetry, 
though  it  need  not  therefore  be  untrue. 

20.  The  whole  motive  that  gives  rise  to  metaphysical 
monisms  appears  to  lie  in  an  effort  to  obtain  an  intuition  of 
the  universe  by  an  apotheosis  of  the  principle  of  identity. 
It  seems  to  be  inferred  that  the  only  ultimately  satisfying 
self-identity  must  needs  be  homogeneous,  whether  it  be  mat- 

59]  59 


60  THE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  [60 

ter,  spirit  or  Spinozistic  substance ;  and  so  philosophers 
strive  to  find  a  subject  in  which  each  phase  and  quality  of 
the  universe  must  inhere. 

Now  the  only  reason  that  we  have  for  postulating  a  meta- 
physical monism  lies  in  the  limitation  of  our  power  of  apper- 
ceiving,  or  of  grasping  and  holding,  a  unit  of  vast  complica- 
tion. We  replace  qualitative  by  quantitative  extension,  as 
our  one  means  of  even  representing  a  universe.  Our  argu- 
ment in  every  case  rests  upon  human  impotence.  It  is 
possible — and  the  matter  will  recur  later — that  all  our  meta- 
physical determinations  and  all  the  necessities  of  our  knowl- 
edge in  the  end  mean  only  our  powerlessness ;  but  if  this  is 
so,  it  surely  ought  to  be  taken  into  account  in  our  estimates 
of  nature,  and  surely  we  ought  not  draw  conclusions  where 
no  imperative  need  exists. 

The  question  then  arises,  are  we  compelled  to  conceive  of 
a  universal  subject?  It  appears  to  me  inevitable  that  we  are 
compelled  to  conceive  and  represent  the  universe  as  unitary; 
but  it  does  not  follow  that  we  are  warranted  in  saying  that 
it  is  unitary,  and  certainly  it  does  not  follow  that  we  are 
forced  to  describe  its  unity  as  that  of  an  homogeneous  sub- 
ject. Doubtless  it  is  easier  and  more  intelligible  to  do  this, 
doubtless  there  is  a  real  intellectual  demand  for  a  subject; 
but  the  subject  explains  nothing,  and,  so  far  as  I  can  see, 
adds  nothing  to  what  is  implied  in  •  unity,' — it  is  a  unifying 
subject  and  nothing  more.  Let  us  take,  for  example, 
Spinoza's  substance.  Here  is  a  subject  in  which  all  the 
facts  and  qualities  of  the  world  as  it  exists  for  us  inhere  as 
attributes.  But  it  does  not  render  these  facts  and  qualities 
more  intelligible  on  that  account,  or  the  world  either  more 
or  less  many-sided.  Spinoza's  world  is  precisely  the  same 
world  as  that  described  to  us  by  Herbart's  real  qualities,  and 
we  have  quite  as  much  justification  for  postulating  a  subject 
for  each  of  these  qualities  as  for  all  of  them  together.     The 


6j]  the  PRhXCIPLE  of  identity  6 1 

only  difference  would  be  that,  in  assigning  to  reality  many 
subjects,  we  should  have  complicated  rather  than  simplified 
the  universe.  But  it  does  not  follow  that  the  doctrine  would 
be  any  less  true  to  experience,  for  in  experience  there  is  un- 
questionably a  multiplicity  of  diverse  objects  and  it  is  these 
objects  in  all  their  diversity  that  constitute  our  reality. 

The  notion  of  subject  appears  to  serve  ( I )  as  a  concept 
by  means  of  which  we  unify  experience  by  uniting  its  diver- 
sities around  a  conceptual  centre,  and  (2)  as  a  limiting  con- 
cept by  means  of  which  we  bound  the  extension  of  our 
knowledge.  In  either  case  it  is  an  expression  of  our  im- 
potence :  as  a  unifying  concept  it  denotes  the  narrowness  of 
our  apperceptive  powers;  as  a  limiting  concept,  our  in- 
ability to  extend  our  knowledge.  No  doubt  the  idea  has 
some  warrant  in  empirical  experience.  In  experience  of 
things  we  are  inevitably  led  to  it.  But  it  is  more  than  ques- 
tionable if  we  are  warranted  in  extending  it  to  metaphysical 
entities,  since  even  in  the  empirical  world  we  are  unable  to 
give  a  satisfactory  account  of  our  meaning. 

But  granting  the  usefulness  and  validity  of  the  subject  as 
a  logical  equivalent  of  the  existent  or  as  a  unifying  and  lim- 
iting concept,  there  is  still  to  be  asked  what  content  of 
meaning  the  concept  may  have,  for  in  none  of  these  uses 
does  it  stand  for  more  than  a  mode  of  thinking  or  a  mere 
convenience  of  expression,  representing  no  actual  element 
of  anything.  Now  the  sorts  of  contents  that  we  are  most 
used  to  seeing  made  to  serve  for  ontological  subject  or  sub- 
stance are  such  as  atoms  of  matter,  ether,  consciousness. 
All  of  these  represent,  if  they  represent  anything  at  all,  ab- 
stractions from  our  immediate  experience  of  multiple  quali- 
ties ;  they  are  nothing  more  than  one  quality  or  group  of 
qualities  chosen  from  among  many  and  hypostatized  into 
real  existences  or  subjects,  in  which  all  other  qualities  inhere 
as  attributes.     For  practical  purposes  it  may  be  expedient 


62  THE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  [62 

so  to  hypostatize ;  it  is  another  elimination  in  the  algebra  of 
thought.  But  metaphysically,  there  is  no  better  reason  for 
saying  that  the  universe  is  atoms  or  ether,  than  for  saying 
that  it  is  olive  green  or  a  feeling  of  nausea ;  if  '  olive  green ' 
='  vibrations  of  ether,'  it  does  not  make  a  particle  of 
difference,  apart  from  utility,  which  is  chosen  to  explain  the 
other  or  to  be  the  subject.  The  same  may  be  said  of  con- 
sciousness. I  know  that  when  we  say  that  the  universe  is 
consciousness,  we  seem  to  be  getting  a  multiplicity  in  our 
sameness;  but  if  the  sameness  is  made  broad  enough  to  in- 
clude all  differences,  even  opposites  and  contradictories  (as 
of  course  it  must  be  if  it  is  the  universe),  it  becomes  too 
impalpable  for  thought.  There  is  left  not  even  a  trace  of 
the  erasure ;  all  that  we  have  is  a  notion  similar  to  Hegel's 
conception  of  being,  so  pervasively  nude  as  to  be  no  more 
than  a  shimmer  of  nothingness  upon  a  background  of 
naught.  But  if  the  sameness  be  ignored,  as  it  is  bound  to 
be,  since  it  is  no  longer  a  sameness  of  anything,  then  we 
have  a  mere  multiplicity  without  any  subject  at  all ;  or  if 
consciousness  is  still  taken  as  a  subject,  it  can  mean  no  more 
than  an  apperceptional  unification  of  the  manifold  of  the 
given. 

There  is,  then,  no  good  reason  for  a  doctrine  of  meta- 
physical monism  on  the  ground  that  it  simplifies  the  onto- 
logical  problem,  for  the  subjects  which  monistic  theories 
offer  are  always  gotten  by  a  process  of  abstraction  from 
reality,  the  native  heterogeneity  of  which  is  disregarded  in  a 
wholly  arbitrary  manner.  And  certainly  unless  this  hetero- 
geneity can  legitimately  be  deduced  from  the  subject  and 
intelligibly  accounted  for,  instead  of  being  denied,  "  trans- 
fused," or  ignored,  as  is  commonly  the  case,  there  is  neither 
rhyme  nor  reason  in  the  monism. 

But  there  is  a  sense  in  which  we  may  be  monists  and  still 
be  rational,  though  it  is  not  a  monism  based  upon  homo- 


63]  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  IDENTITY  63 

gencity  of  content  that  is  allowed  us.  As  I  have  said,  we  are 
forced  to  think  of  the  universe  as  one,  whether  it  is  so  or  not, 
and  if  we  further  state  that  this  one  is  a  unitary  organization, 
we  have  a  theory  that  might  be  called  monism  which  yet 
does  not  neglect  differences.  Organization  implies  nothing 
more  than  interrelation,  and  the  relations  may  be  between 
unlike  as  well  as  like  things.  We  may  even  make  them  fixed 
and  necessary  relations,  so  that  if  one  element  of  reality  be 
taken  away  all  must  disappear;  indeed,  they  must  be  neces- 
sary if  we  are  to  have  a  genuine  monism.  In  this  sense  we 
can  speak  of  any  necessary  element  as  an  attribute  or  aspect 
of  the  whole,  and  of  the  whole  as  a  subject ;  but  by  the  sub- 
ject we  cannot  mean  anything  more  than  the  sum  of  the 
attributes.  To  put  it  very  shortly,  we  can  abstract  only  for 
the  sake  of  knowing ;  it  is  only  for  knowledge  that  triangu- 
larity exists  apart  from  extension.  In  the  world  of  fact  there 
are  no  abstractions,  and  no  subjects  and  no  attributes,  for 
these  are  only  terms  of  convenience  in  the  description  of 
facts. 

But  an  objection  may  be  raised  even  to  the  kind  of  monism 
here  allowed.  It  springs  from  the  fact  which  appears  to  lie 
at  the  base  of  the  Hegelian  dialectic,  that  we  are  unable  to 
"rest  in  a  whole"  once  grasped.  That  is  to  say,  the  very 
fact  that  we  are  forced  to  apprehend  in  units  isolated  by  at- 
tention is  felt  as  a  limitation  of  the  process  of  apprehension, 
and  because  we  feel  the  limitation  we  are  forced  to  infer 
somewhat  which  limits  or  defines  the  unity  apprehended. 
This  is  the  so-called  self-transcendence  of  an  experience  ever 
demanding  a  satisfaction  beyond  itself.  Of  course  we  could 
not  have  a  monistic  universe  if  it  had  to  be  self-transcendent. 
An  Absolute  which  synthesizes  a  unit  and  its  limiting 'other' 
cannot  itself  be  one  in  any  of  the  senses  that  we  ordinarily 
assign  to  unity.  If  it  could,  there  would  be  an  infinite  series 
of  units  and  '  others,'  and  so  of  Absolutes.     But  as  an  ob- 


64  THE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  [64 

jection  to  monism  the  difficulty  here  involved  can  hardly  be 
taken  seriously.  It  could  never  arise  except  in  a  metaphysic 
based  upon  logic,  and  it  can  have  significance  only  in  those 
systems  which  affirm  that  the  plan  of  the  universe  is  to  be 
found  in  the  psychology  of  cognition. 

21.  Admitting  the  validity  of  the  notion  of  a  unitary  or- 
ganization that  necessitates  the  character  and  place  of  each 
of  the  organized  parts,  there  arises  the  inevitable  query  as  to 
the  meaning  of  unit  and  unitary.  It  is  a  recurrence  of  the 
problem  of  the  subject  in  a  new  guise,  for  '  subject,'  '  thing,' 
'individual*  and  'organism'  are  all  conceptual  descriptions 
of  the  sort  of  unity  allowed.  It  is  doubtful  whether  in  last 
resort  we  are  not  forced  to  the  tautology  of  describing  the 
thing  or  subject  as  an  organic  unit  in  experience,  the  unit  as 
a  thing  or  subject.  Possibly  the  unitary  aspect  may  be  ac- 
counted for,  directly  or  indirectly,  by  the  unity  of  appercep- 
tion; for  it  may  be  that  every  subject,  thing  and  organism  is 
such  only  because  of  the  self-limiting  nature  of  our  mode  of 
apprehension,  and  that  if  we  were  able  to  intuit  the  whole 
complexus  of  the  world  as  directly  as  we  intuit  simple  com- 
plications of  qualities,  we  should  have  qualities  only  and  no 
subjects  at  all.  But  this  is  hard  to  believe.  The  unity  of 
things  and  of  organisms  certainly  does  not  seem  to  be  created 
by  our  psychical  limitations.  We  feel  it  to  be  characteristic 
of  the  things  themselves,  and  it  cannot  be  made  to  seem  a 
mere  restriction  or  convenience  of  our  thought.  If  we  have 
any  natural  predilections  in  the  matter,  it  is  in  favor  of  the 
reality  and  worth  of  things  rather  than  of  mere  qualitative 
diffusions  of  consciousness  representing  no  unity  at  all. 

A  truer  attempt  to  define  the  unity  of  the  thing  might  be 
with  reference  to  psychical  and  biological  significances.  In 
such  a  sense  a  thing  would  be  a  stimulus  or  centre  of  stimuli 
to  be  reacted  to  in  a  certain  way.  It  would  also  have  iden- 
tity in  space  and  time.     But  this  alone  could  not  differentiate 


(55]  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  IDENTITY  65 

it;  there  would  have  to  be  in  addition,  a  limitation  by  other 
qualities  of  the  stimuli  occasioning  the  peculiar  reaction. 
Even  this  type  of  definition  is  unsatisfactory,  for  we  can 
hardly  escape  the  conviction  that  what  constitutes  a  thing  is 
to  be  found  in  some  inner  necessity  of  its  construction — that 
it  is  a  real  thing,  in  short,  and  not  a  thing  for  knowledge 
alone. 

While  we  are  not  prepared  to  say  what  a  thing  or  a  sub- 
ject is,  or  what  constitutes  the  unity  of  either,  we  may  dis- 
tinguish this  unity  from  other  sorts.  Hegel  discriminated 
Einheit,  or  unity  proper,  from  Anzahl,  sum  or  total  number, 
and  this  distinction  is  of  undoubted  significance.  We  may 
question  whether  there  is  any  real  difference  in  kind  between 
the  organic  and  the  aggregate  unit  so  long  as  each  is  con- 
sidered as  a  whole.  We  may  affirm  that  the  difference 
between  a  house  and  a  pile  of  bricks  is  only  a  difference  in 
the  degree  of  complexity  in  the  relations  of  the  parts  to  the 
whole.  But  when  we  come  to  consider  the  nature  of  the 
parts  and  of  their  interrelations  we  find  that  there  are  differ- 
ences of  kind  in  their  relations  to  the  whole  which  affect  our 
conception  of  its  unity.  Analysis  of  these  differences  shows 
that  there  are  two  ways  of  describing  things  numerically. 
They  are  (1)  by  enumeration  of  parts  or  qualities  taken  in 
distinction  to  one  another,  and  (2)  by  measurement  of  iden- 
tical parts  or  qualities  in  terms  of  some  external  unit.'  Each 
of  these  modes  of  description  may  be  employed  in  describ- 

1  The  distinction  drawn  in  this  paragraph  does  not  quite  agree  with  the  view 
expressed  by  Mr.  Bosanquet  in  chap,  iv  of  his  Logic.  Enumeration,  although 
based  upon  some  distinction  of  parts,  is  in  his  view  an  ideal  repetition  of  a  fixed 
unit;  and  hence,  while  anterior  to  measurement,  is  not  to  be  sharply  distinguished 
from  it.  In  my  opinion  enumeration,  as  mere  counting,  is  essentially  an  emphasis 
of  differences  without  regard  to  the  fixity  of  the  unit.  Mr.  Bosanquet's  conten- 
tion that  every  enumeration  and  measurement  is  made  with  reference  not  only  to 
a  unit  but  also  to  a  limit  or  whole,  is  undoubtedly  true.  It  is  such  a  whole  that 
I  have  endeavored  to  distinguish  from  other  unities  as  the  '  organic  unit.' 


66  THE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  [fa 

ing  any  given  thing,  and  according  to  the  mode  employed, 
and  so  to  the  aspect  emphasized,  the  thing  will  be  considered 
an  organic  unity  or  a  mere  aggregate  or  quantity.  Of  course 
the  aspect  of  the  thing  which  is  likely  to  be  emphasized  is 
determined  by  the  character  of  the  thing  itself,  and  the  mode 
of  description  has  nothing  to  do  with  determining  this  char- 
acter, except  conceptually. 

Mere  distinction  or  difference  in  a  content  or  subject  is  the 
ground  for  the  unit  of  enumeration.  When  we  observe  dif- 
ference, we  have  begun  to  form  the  abstraction  represented 
by  this  unit.  We  recognize  one  thing  and  another,  or  one 
attribute  and  another ;  that  is,  two  things  or  two  attributes, 
or  perhaps  merely  two  somewhats  undetermined  except  by 
their  mutual  distinction.  Of  course  there  must  be  a  genus 
or  whole  within  which  the  distinction  is  made,  but  this  does 
not  necessitate  that  the  distinguished  parts  are  the  same  in 
any  other  sense  than  as  parts  of  this  whole.  The  unit  of 
enumeration  is  really  the  abstraction  of  bare  difference.  As 
unit  it  means  'the  differing'  and  nothing  more.  And  a 
numerical  series,  or  a  number,  constructed  from  such  units 
never  describes  an  aggregate  or  sum,  but  always  a  whole 
made  up  of  as  many  differences  as  there  are  units.  The 
enumerative  series,  then,  represents  no  quantity,  but  rather 
complexity.  It  stands  for  qualitative  variety.  At  the  same 
time  any  distinction  implies  some  degree  of  sameness  in  the 
things  distinguished.  They  at  least  belong  to  one  exper- 
ience, and  are  alike  in  each  being  a  somewhat  within  it. 
And  aside  from  this  larger  identity,  there  is  implied  a  same- 
ness, not  of  the  units  with  one  another,  but  of  expanse  of 
quality  within  the  content  of  each  one.  This  aspect  we  can 
consciously  grasp  only  by  avoiding  it.  When  attention  is 
devoted  to  an  enumeration  of  differences,  there  is  felt  to  be 
a  certain  voluminous  homogeneity,  a  distinctionless  con- 
tinuum of  some  sort,  within  each  different  quality  discrimi- 


67]  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  IDENTITY  fy 

nated.  To  my  mind,  'sameness'  always  carries  some 
reference  to  this  undistinguished  volume  of  quality  or  char- 
acter, this  inner  aspect  of  the  unit,  just  as  'identity'  de- 
scribes it  in  its  external  aspect,  or  as  a  centre  of  reference. 
Now  such  a  sameness  of  quality  may  be  called  quantity,  but 
it  is  not  measurable  quantity,  for  it  can  never  in  any  sense 
imply  discreteness  of  content.  It  can  only  be  that  mere 
•muchness'  which  gives  the  substantive  feeling  to  any  con- 
tinuum in  space  or  time.  The  moment  measurement  is  at- 
tempted the  feeling  vanishes  and  the  continuum  becomes  a 
succession.  If  the  sameness  still  exists,  it  does  so  in  spite 
of  the  discreteness  that  has  been  introduced  and  not  by 
reason  of  it,  and  as  pure  voluminous  quality  it  can  be  real- 
ized only  by  first  abstracting  the  differences  introduced  by 
the  measurement. 

The  unit  which  is  concerned  with  quantitative  descriptions 
is  the  unit  of  measurement.  In  itself  it  is  always  external  to 
what  it  measures,1  and  it  describes  in  terms  of  function  or 
activity :  one  thing  will  do  the  same  amount  of  work,  occupy 
an  equal  space  or  time,  or  answer  the  same  purpose  as 
another.  Measurement  is  thus  always  representative,  and 
the  kind  of  explanation  that  it  gives  is  essentially  illustra- 
tive. The  equationai  form  of  expression  is  only  the  precise 
simile.  The  unit  of  measurement  considered  internally,  or 
in  respect  to  its  content,  is  always  qualitative.  But  it  is  also 
always  ideal  and  generic  with  reference  to  that  which  is  to 
be  measured.  It  is  ideal  because  it  is  external  to  the  thing 
measured,  and  generic  because  it  is  the  standard  for  the 
content  of  each  repetition  of  the  unit  in  the  measurement. 
It  is  thus  a  qualitative  basis  for  quantitative  determinations. 

1  Of  course  a  whole  may  be  measured  in  terms  of  one  of  its  parts,  but  when  this 
is  the  case  the  part  has  really  to  be  taken  in  abstraction  from  its  essential  relation 
to  the  whole,  and  so  is  external  to  it  in  the  same  way  that  any  other  unit  of  mea»- 
urement  would  be  external. 


68  THE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  [68 

Now  quantitative  determinations  may  also  be  enumerations; 
but  instead  of  being  enumerations  of  differences,  they  are 
repetitions  of  identities.  The  same  numerical  series  is  em- 
ployed as  in  the  case  of  enumeration  of  differences,  and  in 
one  sense  the  series  may  be  said  still  to  represent  differ- 
ences, but  these  differences  are  always  in  quantity — the 
number  of  repetitions  of  the  one  standard — never  in  varying 
quality.  Quantity  which  is  determined  by  measurement  is 
altogether  different  from  that  mere  continuum  of  self-same 
quality  which  was  found  to  be  implied  in  the  unit  of  bare 
difference.  That  was  purely  homogeneous  and  indeter- 
minate ,  but  mensurable  quantity  always  implies  a  difference 
in  the  sameness  which  is  measured,  determined  by  the  num- 
ber of  reduplications  of  the  unit  of  measurement.  And  even 
this  unit,  considered  in  itself  and  apart  from  any  equation, 
represents  a  difference  in  identity,  because  it  is  generic. 

22.  The  foregoing  analysis  has  been  necessary  to  enable 
us  to  understand  clearly  how  far  the  principle  of  identity  can 
serve  us  in  explanation.  It  will  readily  be  seen  that  the 
differences  abstracted  in  the  purely  enumerative  series  can 
only  be  represented  by  a  series  varying  with  the  original 
unit  for  unit,  and  that  nothing  would  be  gained  by  such  a 
representation.  It  is,  then,  the  unit  of  measurement  and  the 
repetitive  or  quantitative  series  to  which  we  must  look  for 
descriptions  and  identifications  in  likeness ;  and  it  is  only  in 
this  series  that  we  can  have  profitable  explanations.  But  in 
saying  this  it  should  be  borne  in  mind  that  there  are  two 
types  of  measurement,  and  so  of  explanation  based  upon  it. 
No  matter  what  the  unit  may  be  which  we  choose  as  a 
standard,  it  must  represent  some  quality  to  be  repeated. 
When  attention  is  centred  upon  the  repetitions  rather  than 
the  quality,  we  have  quantitative  explanations,  or  measure- 
ment in  a  strict  sense.  When,  on  the  other  hand,  the  quality 
is  emphasized,  we  have  explanation  by  means  of  universals 
and  generic  ideas. 


69"|  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  IDENTITY  69 

Explanations  of  the  world  based  upon  either  sort  of  meas- 
urement are  subject  to  the  same  criticism  as  monism.  In- 
stead of  one  ultimate  principle  upon  which  the  whole  world 
is  to  be  accounted  for  and  by  which  all  its  variety  is  to  be 
measured,  there  may  be  several,  as  in  the  case  of  Plato's 
Ideas  we  have  many  separate  patterns  of  reality,  and  again 
in  the  case  of  the  chemical  elements  a  number  of  kinds  of 
matter.  But  whether  there  be  one  pattern  or  many,  the 
error  is  the  same,  and  it  consists  in  asserting  that  what  is 
measured  is  identical  with  the  standard  of  measurement  in- 
stead of  is  like  it,  or  is  equal  to  it  (like  it  in  function  or 
activity).  This  criticism  has  already  appeared  in  the  dis- 
cussion of  the  subject  and  it  need  not  be  further  elucidated. 
One  may  merely  reiterate  that  to  obtain  strict  identity  it 
would  be  necessary  to  have  a  separate  unit  of  measurement 
for  each  event  in  the  universe,  and  even  if  such  units  be 
termed  the  subjects  of  the  events,  we  have  only  complicated 
our  pluralism.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  by  measurements  of 
events,  we  mean  but  to  discover  their  likenesses,  one  with 
another,  then  we  have  identities  for  knowledge  alone,  and 
the  complication  of  real  events  is  as  great  as  ever. 

Another  type  of  error  is  to  be  found  in  those  systems 
which  seek  to  explain  the  world  by  means  of  universals,  and 
it  lies  in  their  confounding  the  generic  unit  with  the  organic 
unit  or  the  whole.  The  whole  of  the  genus,  whether  it  be 
taken  as  conceptual  or  collective,  is  certainly  not  the  same 
as  the  whole  of  the  individual.  Of  all  the  great  dialectic 
systems  that  of  Plato  alone  appears  to  have  emphasized  this 
distinction.  When  he  makes  unity  the  supreme  form  of  the 
Ideas,  it  is  not  the  unity  of  a  One  of  which  they  are  parts, 
but  a  unity  of  each  Idea  which  makes  it  a  whole.  The  Ideas 
are  the  sole  organic  units  and  hence  the  sole  realities.  In  a 
strict  sense,  they  are  not  universals  at  all,  but  individuals. 
Doubtless  they  were  derived  by  a  process  of  generalization, 
but  they  were  conceived  as  real  existences. 


j0  THE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  [~q 

Explanations  which  emphasize  the  quantitative  aspect  of 
measurement,  as  in  physical  science,  are  apt  to  neglect 
organic  unity  instead  of  confusing  it  with  the  qualitative 
content  of  the  standard,  as  do  the  dialecticians.  Doubtless 
all  science  proceeds  upon  a  tacit  assumption  of  the  final 
organic  or  mechanical  unity  of  the  universe  as  a  whole. 
Mill's  necessary  presupposition  of  the  uniformity  of  nature 
is  no  less  than  this.  But  the  concrete  units  of  experience — 
the  unities  of  things  and  individuals — are  largely  ignored,  or, 
if  they  are  treated  at  all,  it  is  only  in  an  effort  to  reduce  them 
to  some  primal  nebula  of  atoms,  ether  or  energy.  Even  the 
assumption  of  the  unity  of  the  universe  and  of  its  final 
mechanical  necessity  is  not  altogether  consistent  with  the 
effort  to  explain  it  upon  a  quantitative  basis.  It  is  only 
because  such  an  effort  is  in  its  nature  self-limited  that  it  is 
content  to  stop  with  anything  short  of  nebulous  chaos. 

23.  By  physical  science  energy  or  efficiency  is  taken  as 
the  measure,  if  not  of  every  event  in  the  universe,  at  least  of 
all  that  can  be  explained  by  quantitative  method.  Now 
energy  or  efficiency  is  a  qualitative  content  of  a  unit  of 
measurement.  In  itself  it  is  only  an.abstraction  from  specific 
manifestations  of  energy,  and  these  manifestations  are  always 
in  the  form  of  some  activity  or  achievement.  Accordingly, 
whether  we  speak  of  an  erg,  an  ampere  or  a  horse-power,  we 
always  have  reference  to  a  capacity  to  perform  definite  work. 
We  may  define  the  energy  as  vibrations  of  ether,  as  mere 
causal  efficiency,  or  yet  as  the  sum  of  the  mechanical  deter- 
minants of  events — as  a  generic  term  in  the  description  of 
physical  phenomena,  representing  their  convertibility  into 
work ;  but  in  any  case  it  is  known  only  in  its  manifestation  in 
what  is  done.1 

1  It  is  difficult  to  say  exactly  what,  apart  from  its  particular  applications,  the 
concept  of  energy  means  for  physical  science.  It  is  sometimes  talked  of  as  if  it 
were  a  form  of  essence  or  substance  akin  to  matter.     It  is  even  directly  compared 


7l-\  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  IDENTITY  J\ 

The  choosing  of  the  unit  is  only  a  preliminary  step.  It  is 
the  business  of  the  science  to  show  that  phenomena  can  be 
represented  in  terms  of  this  unit — that  energy  can  measure 
events — and  in  order  to  do  this,  it  is  necessary  ( I )  to  render 
the  unit  intelligible  in  terms  of  concrete  experience,  and  (2) 
to  show  the  likeness  or  equivalence  of  capacity  in  the 
various  forms  of  phenomenal  happenings. 

The  first  task  is  relatively  easy  and  is  often  achieved  in 
the  selection  of  the  unit  itself,  as  in  the  case  of  a  candle- 
power  or  of  a  horse-power  or  of  a  foot-pound.  A  light  of 
the  particular  intensity  or  the  conditions  of  time,  space  and 
gravity  for  the  particular  mechanical  effort  may  readily  be 
produced  so  that  we  may  come  to  realize  in  our  immediate 
experience  the  meaning  of  the  term.  The  same  is  true,  if 
perhaps  less  obviously,  of  other  units — the  degree  of  heat, 
the    ampere    of    electricity,  and    so   on.     Each    derives    its 

to  matter  as  a  physical  reality,  differing  from  it  only  in  being  less  "  tangible " 
(Prof.  Tait,  Recent  Advances  in  Physical  Science).  Prof.  Mach  terms  it  an 
"  unzcrslerbare  Efwas,"  the  measure  of  which  is  mechanical  work  {Printip  dcr 
Erhallung  des  Energie') .  But  the  definition  of  energy  commonly  given—  as  power 
of  doing  work  (cf.  Tait,  op.  cit.,  p.  18;  Prof.  Mach  also  identifies  Energie  and 
Arbeilsfahigkeit)— would  seem  to  give  it  an  altogether  different  meaning,  i.  e.,  as 
efficiency.  Of  course  "  capacity  for  work  "  is  an  abstraction  from  particular  ex- 
emplifications of  working  activities;  the  implication  of  potentiality  in  such  words 
as  'capacity,'  'power'  and  •  Fiihigkeit'  cannot  mean  anything  excepting  its 
actual  realization  in  work.  But  we  can  treat  it  as  potential,  or  as  something  in 
and  for  itself,  by  conceiving  it  as  cause  of  work  which  is  to  be  manifested  or  has 
been  manifested  in  some  other  than  present  time.  But  the  concept  of  cause  is 
considered  by  many  physicists  objectionable  as  involving  metaphysical  ambiguities 
(cf.  Mach,  e.g.,  op.  cit.,  p.  200");  and  a  late  development  of  physical  theory  ad- 
vances a  doctrine  of  "  Energetics  "  which  maintains  that  energy,  alone  adequate 
to  represent  physical  reality,  is  to  be  understood  as  a  generic  term  in  the  descrip- 
tion of  physical  phenomena  representing  their  convertibility  into  work,  and  so 
mensurability  in  its  units.  Energy  is  thus  a  sum  of  mechanical  determinants 
taken  in  their  purely  phenomenal  aspect,  and  its  persistence  is  to  be  understood 
as  only  an  expression  for  the  ceaselessness  of  physical  activity,  the  endless  flow  of 
fact.  In  such  sense  the  fitness  and  meaning  of  the  term  concerns  the  specialist 
alone. 


72  THE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  [72 

meaning  from  immediate  experience  as  surely  if  not  as 
directly  as  the  inch  which  is  the  length  of  a  man's  thumb- 
joint  or  the  yard  which  represents  his  stride. 

When  we  come  to  actual  measurement  and  the  formation 
of  equations,  we  have  reached  what  is  most  characteristic  of 
scientific  procedure  and  aim.  Measurement  is  based  upon 
the  repetition  of  the  given  unit,  and  repetition  is  conditioned 
by  time,  and,  in  the  physical  world,  by  space.  But  in  case 
of  measurements  in  time — and  so  of  all  measurements  of 
energy — it  is  impossible  to  form  equations  that  represent 
quantity  by  mere  repetition.  Even  if  a  given  antecedent 
(taken  as  a  unit)  is  always  followed  by  the  same  conse- 
quent, we  cannot  mean  by  equating  the  two  anything  more 
than  this  uniformity  of  happening,  and  uniformity  in  itself  is 
mere  quality.  In  order  to  get  a  quantitative  equation  the 
antecedent  must  be  shown  to  be  convertible  with  its  conse- 
quent, that  is,  the  consequent  must  be  so  manipulated  that 
it  may  produce  a  consequent  just  like  its  antecedent.  When 
this  is  done  we  may  assert  that  the  two  are  quantitatively 
equal,  and  it  is  on  this  ground  that  the  equality  of  cause  and 
effect  is  asserted.  The  convertibility  of  different  types  of 
phenomena  and  the  possibility  of  repeating  one  of  the  types 
in  fixed  unities  of  time  and  space  enable  quantitative  equa- 
tion. The  repeated  unit  represents  the  measured  pheno- 
menon not  only  because  it  may  directly  or  indirectly 
produce  it,  but  also  because  it  may  be  produced  by  it.  But 
it  should  not  be  overlooked  that  the  unit  still  only  repre- 
sents the  measured  phenomenon ;  it  is  not  the  phenomenon 
itself.  Light  may  produce  heat,  and  heat  light,  but  they  are 
not  identical.1 

1  An  equation  of  the  forces  or  energies  manifested  in  phenomena  antecedent 
and  consequent  to  one  another  is  never  an  expression  of  an  identity  between 
them.  The  identity  subsists  betwe  n  each  phenomenon  and  the  ideal  unit  which 
measures  them.     Just  as  in  the  case  of  the  universal,  this  unit,  in  itself  an  abstrac- 


73]  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  IDENTITY  73 

In  order,  then,  to  get  a  theoretically  adequate  representa- 
tion of  the  universe  in  terms  of  a  physical  unit,  it  is  neces- 
sary to  show  that  all  the  phenomena  in  the  universe  are 
convertible  into  that  unit  or  repetitions  of  it — that  is,  that  it 
may  be  made  either  antecedent  or  consequent  of  every  phe- 
nomenon. It  is  plain  enough  that  in  the  present  state  of 
science  this  is  impossible.  Psychical,  biological  and  even 
chemical  phenomena  are  not  yet  shown  to  be  convertible 
with  physical.  But  granting  the  hypothetical  possibility  of 
such  convertibility,  it  is  of  interest  to  enquire  just  what  the 
final  equations  could  mean  metaphysically.  In  order  to  see 
this  we  must  return  to  the  content  of  our  unit.  Suppose 
that  it  were  with  horse-powers  that  all  the  phenomena  of  the 
universe  could  be  made  convertible  and  that  the  whole  uni- 
verse could  be  shown  to  be  equal  to  n  horse-power,  still  we 
should  not  say  that  the  universe  would  be  the  given  exertion 
of  11  horses,  engines  or  men  under  set  conditions.  That  is 
palpably  absurd.  If  we  wish  to  refine,  we  might  suppose 
that  the  total  phenomena  of  the  world  could  be  expressed  in 
candle-power,  but  we  should  not  say  that  for  that  reason  it 
must  be  light.  If  we  make  vibrations  of  ether  the  content 
of  our  unit,  we  have  not  bettered  the  case,  but  have  only 
rendered  it  a  little  less  intelligible,  because  of  the  difficulty 
of  conceiving  ether  at  all.     Always  in  making  one  quality  or 

tion  from  reality,  represents  the  common  quality  of  the  phenomena.  The  only 
difference  between  such  a  unit  and  the  universal  which  forms  the  real  middle 
term  of  a  syllogism  is  that  the  unit  of  measurement  may,  when  numerically  deter- 
mined, represent  repetitions,  or  quantity,  of  the  quality  which  constitutes  the 
universal.  Again,  it  should  be  noted  that  the  equating  of  phenomena  in  terms 
of  any  particular  unit  is  a  matter  of  convenience  rather  than  of  necessity.  Our 
choice  of  a  representative  quality  is  arbitrary  except  for  reasons  of  utility.  If 
some  other  quality  were  chosen  we  might  very  likely  discover  that  the  phenomena 
could  not  be  equated  at  all.  For  example,  a  metrical  scale  based  upon  just  ob- 
servable differences  in  sense  discriminations,  while  giving  as  true  physical  descrip- 
tion, could  hardly  be  interpreted  in  units  of  work. 


74  THE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  [74 

combination  of  qualities  within  the  universe  the  measure  of 
the  whole,  the  greater  advantage  for  knowledge  lies  with  the 
more  concrete  quality  chosen. 

But  there  is  an  alternative  view.  Let  us  grant  that  all 
physical  phenomena  could  be  shown  to  be  equal  to  n  ergs, 
and  that  the  erg  can  be  understood  only  in  empirical  experi- 
ence, still  we  may  maintain  that  what  is  actually  represented 
by  the  empirical  symbolization  is  an  energy  or  efficiency 
which  is  the  cause  of  all  phenomena  and  is  proven  to  be  one 
and  the  same  by  their  inter-convertibility.  Such  a  view 
appears  to  be  the  logical  outcome  of  the  aims  of  quantita- 
tive science.     It  involves  certain  significant  consequences. 

First,  we  cannot  affirm  of  this  energy  any  quantitative 
extension.  The  only  reason  that  we  have  for  introducing 
quantitative  relations  is  in  order  that  we  may  form  equations 
for  the  expression  of  differences.  The  likenesses  implied  in 
the  quantitative  form  are  sought  for  economy  in  conception, 
but  they  are  based  upon  a  discreteness  in  events  which  is  at 
least  a  uniform  difference.  In  our  equation — the  universe 
=  n  ergs — the  plurality  of  '  «  ergs '  represents  the  differ- 
ence of  the  phenomena  equated  and  is  significant  only 
within  the  universe.  The  efficiency  or  energy  which  is  the 
cause  of  the  whole  universe  can  only  be  represented :  n  ergs 
=  x  efficiency.  The  efficiency  is  the  whole  cause;  the 
universe  is  the  whole  effect.  We  can  equate  the  wholes, 
but  our  equation  can  only  mean  that  they  are  qualitatively 
equal,  for  the  reason  that  we  cannot  show  that  they  are  con- 
vertible. Convertibility  lies  only  between  phenomena,  and 
while  it  might  be  taken  as  evidence  that  they  have  like  ante- 
cedents, it  could  not  show  that  all  phenomena  have  not  a 
self-identical  antecedent. 

Secondly,  we  cannot  deny  to  this  ultimate  efficiency  qual- 
itative difference  except  upon  the  further  hypothesis  that  it 
is  itself  a  quality.     If  we  make  it  a  quality  it  can  only  be  in- 


75]  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  IDENTITY  75 

telligible  in  terms  of  our  experience.  It  must,  in  other 
words,  be  an  hypostatization  of  some  quality  or  group  of 
qualities  within  experience.  Such  hypostatization  has 
already  been  discussed  under  the  head  of  monism ;  for  the 
present,  it  is  only  necessary  to  note  that  efficiency  itself 
may  represent  a  quality  of  immediate  experience,  and  it  is 
as  such  that  it  is  apt  to  be  understood.  Of  course  we  can 
assume  an  agnostic  position,  affirming  a  cause  for  the  world 
without  asserting  or  denying  either  quantitative  or  qualita- 
tive determinations  of  it. 

If  energy  be  taken  in  the  third  sense  mentioned  at  the  be- 
ginning of  this  section — viz.,  as  a  generic  term  in  the  de- 
scription of  phenomenal  manifestations  of  force — it  ceases  to 
bear  metaphysical  implications.  For  in  this  sense  the  ideal 
standard — taken  as  content  of  the  unit  of  measurement — 
always  remains  purely  ideal.  Whatever  identities  are  ex- 
pressed by  equational  descriptions  are  understood  as  sym- 
bolizing relations  between  phenomena,  and  not  in  any  sense 
their  inner  nature  or  their  relation  to  the  world  as  a  whole. 
The  repetition  of  the  unit  is  understood  to  be  ideal  and  rela- 
tive, and  in  strict  sense  a  measure.  The  position  ignores 
metaphysic,  and  so  is  most  honestly  scientific. 

24.  The  universal  concept  is  a  kind  of  unit  of  measure- 
ment, but  it  is  not  concerned  with  the  quantitative  aspect  of 
phenomena.  The  number  of  repetitions — the  extension  of 
the  genus — does  not  affect  its  real  significance.  It  is  only 
in  its  content — the  universal  content  in  which  all  the  mem- 
bers of  the  genus  are  alike — that  its  meaning  lies.  The  sort 
of  measurement  that  is  involved  is  by  comparison  rather  than 
by  equation.  We  say  that  the  members  of  a  genus  are  alike 
in  the  possession  of  a  common  element,  and  this  common 
element  is  the  unit  of  comparison.  But  when  we  have  spoken 
of  a  common  element,  we  have  already  sown  the  seed  of  dis- 
cordant thinking;   for  the  common   element  is   a  same   or 


•j 6  THE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  [75 

identical  element,  and  since  the  universal  does  not  derive  its 
significance  from  its  repetitions  amid  difference  but  from  its 
intrinsic  value,  if  the  common  element  is  the  universal,  it 
must  be  self-identical — unqualifiedly  the  same  in  all  its  in- 
carnations. It  is  by  such  reasonings  that  we  come  to  con- 
ceive the  universal  as  the  reality  of  that  which  it  measures  or 
expresses. 

The  law  of  identity  is  stated  symbolically,  A  is  A,  A  is 
the  same  as  A,  or  A  is  identical  with  A,  and  these  forms  of 
expression  are  used  indifferently.  It  is  not  my  purpose  to 
undertake  what  has  already  been  performed  by  more  com- 
petent hands  * — a  thorough  study  of  the  meanings  of  same- 
ness and  identity ;  but  there  are  certain  distinctions  in  these 
meanings  essential  to  any  criticism  or  analysis  of  explanation 
by  means  of  universals,  and  these  may  be  briefly  outlined. 

I.  We  speak  of  the  sameness  or  identity  of  a  thing  with 
itself  apart  from  any  felt  relations,  temporal  or  other,  to  any- 
thing external.  It  is  in  this  sense  that  the  law  of  identity  is 
said  to  express  a  mere  tautology. 

II.  We  speak  of  the  sameness  of  two  or  more  things  or 
events  different  in  time  or  space.  It  is  in  this  sense  that  we 
can  talk  of  repetitions  of  the  same  unit;  but  what  we  have 
is  really  a  likeness  or  similarity  of  events  differentiated  only 
by  time  or  space. 

III.  There  is  a  self-sameness,  or  identity,  in  time  which  is 
not  a  mere  likeness  of  repeated  events,  but  rather  the  per- 
sistence of  one  thing  as  a  self-identical  continuum.  This 
kind  of  sameness  is  distinguished  from  the  second  sort  in 
that  it  never  involves  repetition  or  likeness  of  any  descrip- 
tion. It  is  distinguished  from  the  first  sort  in  that  it  does 
involve  consciousness  of  time  or  duration.  It  is  the  same- 
ness-with-itself  of  the  thing  which  seems  persistent,  as  op- 

1  In  Prof.  Fullerton's  Sameness  and  Identity  (University  of  Pennsylvania  Pub- 
lications, 1890). 


77]  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  IDENTITY  jy 

posed  to  the  self-identity  of  a  mere  quality  apart  from  tem- 
poral relations  or  independent  of  any  consciousness  of  them. 
IV.  Distinct  from  all  these  we  have  the  sameness  of  a  uni- 
versal as  the  common  element  of  many  individuals.  In 
themselves  these  may  not  even  be  like  one  another.  It  is  only 
when  we  abstract  from  them  entirely  that  we  get  what  we  call 
the  identical  element.  But  this  element,  qua  element,  is  not 
the  same  in  the  abstraction  and  in  the  particular:  it  is  only 
in  the  latter  that  it  is  an  element  at  all.  When  wholly  ab- 
stracted it  becomes  truly  generic,  and  not  until  then.  And 
as  generic  it  is  altogether  self-identical,  as  in  sense  I.  More- 
over it  is  out  of  space  and  out  of  time,  and  as  itself  it  cannot 
be  found  in  events  which  are  in  space  or  time  (except  as  the 
content  of  an  idea).  Finally,  it  cannot  be  said  to  be  the 
same  as  the  corresponding  element  in  the  individual  except 
in  some  sense  of  likeness— that  is,  as  repeated  amid  differ- 
ences. 

J  We  have,  then,  three  kinds  of  self-identity.  The  first,  the 
mere  tautology  expressed  by  the  law  of  identity  when  taken 
in  its  narrowest  meaning.  The  second  is  the  self-sameness 
of  a  thing  that  persists  in  time.  The  third  is  that  of  the  uni- 
versal or  generic  concept  considered  solely  with  reference  to 
its  intension.  In  addition,  two  kinds  of  likeness,  or  sameness 
in  repetition,  have  been  noted.  First,  the  likeness  of  two  or. 
more  events  differing  only  in  time  or  space,  and  second,  the 
likeness  of  the  common  element  in  the  particular  to  the  same 
content  abstracted  as  the  universal. 

To  gain  a  more  accurate  idea  of  the  meaning  and  function 
of  the  universal,  let  us  see  how  it  is  used  in  reasoning.  When 
in  two  judgments  we  have,  as  we  say,  the  same  idea,  which 
is  to  serve  as  a  middle  term,  we  have  this  same  idea  only  in 
two  different  contexts  or  instances,  hence  as  two  like  events. 
These  two  events — or  in  judgments,  ideas — can  never  coa- 
lesce because  they  are  two,  and  consequently  the  common 


78  THE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  [78 

element  can  never  be  self-identical.  It  can  only  be  the  same 
in  sense  II.,  or  like  in  the  first  sense  of  likeness.  Yet  so  long 
as  they  remain  two,  so  long  as  they  are  discrete,  there  can 
be  no  synthesis.  The  synthetic  inference  must  be  mediated 
by  the  universal,  and  it  is  of  this  process  that  we  must  in- 
quire. The  universal  may  be  taken  as  an  ideal  content — the 
common  element — abstracted  from  all  the  differences  accom- 
panying it  in  its  individual  incarnations.  But  in  such  case 
the  universal  is  no  longer  an  element  at  all;  it  is  merely  an 
ideal  content  to  be  compared  with  other  ideal  contents — the 
particular  ideas — and  it  could  be  the  same  as  these  only  in 
a  sense  of  likeness  (the  second  sense  given).  But  here 
again  there  is  a  discreteness  that  cannot  be  overcome,  for 
the  abstracted  element  must  still  be  conceived  as  a  kind  of 
individual. 

The  modus  operandi  of  the  universal  in  cognition  must  be 
conceived  differently.  The  universal  can  never  exist  as 
itself  in  any  particular.  Neither  can  it  ever  be  an  idea, 
though  we  can  have  ideas  of  universals — the  thought-content 
which  represents  the  intension  of  the  generic  notion.  All 
that  the  universal  can  legitimately  be  within  experience  is, 
psychically,  as  a  sameness-in-seeming  or  as  a  mode  of 
thought-reaction.  Logically,  it  can  only  be  an  affirmation 
of  likeness  amid  difference.  But  this  likeness  is  never  a 
self-identity.  We  may  abstract  from  all  differences  of  quality, 
but  still  we  have  plurality  in  space  or  time.  We  may  ab- 
stract from  space  and  time,  but  even  then  we  have  only  an 
ideal  same-with-itself  which,  so  far  as  it  is  abstraction  from 
actual  events  or  ideas,  can  only  be  an  idea  of  a  universal. 
An  infinite  process  of  abstraction  would  never  give  us  a 
universal  in  experience  in  any  other  sense  than  as  a  mode 
of  thinking  things. 

25.  Let  us  now  resume  the  consideration  of  that  type  of 
thought  which  would  explain  the  world  wholly  by  a  dialec- 


y9-j  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  IDENTITY  79 

tical  use  of  universal  ideas.  I  have  already  indicated  one 
confusion  into  which  such  an  effort  is  like  to  fall:  a  confu- 
sion of  organic  unity  with  the  unity  of  the  ideational  content 
of  the  universal.  It  is  now  evident  enough  why  this  is  falla- 
cious. The  universal  is  always  attained  by  abstraction  from 
some  whole,  or  organic  unit,  and  hence  cannot  be  taken  as 
an  adequate  representation  of  the  complete  reality  of  this 
whole.  But  there  is  another  ambiguity  that  ought  to  be 
considered,  arising  from  the  confounding  of  the  self-identity 
of  the  universal  (really  of  the  ideal  representation  of  the  uni- 
versal) with  the  self-identity  of  that  which  persists  as  tem- 
poral reality  (senses  III.  and  IV.  above  given).  This  has 
appeared  under  another  guise  in  the  chapter  upon  "The 
Object  of  Knowledge,"  but  it  may  be  briefly  re-stated  from 
a  new  point  of  view. 

In  that  chapter  Mr.  Bradley's  doctrine  of  reality  was  care- 
fully considered,  but  as  it  serves  to  illustrate  the  point  in 
question  its  logical  aspect  may  be  again  shortly  sketched. 
In  the  earlier  chapters  of  The  Principles  of  Logic  we  learn 
that  all  ideas  must  be  mere  ideas,  and,  as  used  in  judgments, 
all  ideas  are  universals.  An  idea  is  "  an  adjective  divorced, 
a  parasite  cut  loose,  a  spiiit  without  a  body  seeking  rest  in 
another,  a  mere  possibility  which  by  itself  is  nothing"  (p.  8). 
Now  the  whole  discussion  of  synthetic  judgment  and  of  in- 
ference, in  this  work,  is  concerned  with  showing  us  how  we 
can  have  or  make  an  "  ideal  construction  of  reality."  Such 
construction,  we  find,  must  be  mediated  through  universals. 
What  is  more,  since  all  ideas  are  universals  and  the  construc- 
tion is  ideal,  it  is  inferred  that  universals  form  the  truth  of 
the  reality.  But  this  truth,  except  for  the  modicum  of  error 
which  all  truth  as  knowledge  about  a  thing  implies,  is  the 
same  as  the  reality,  and  hence  the  reality  also  must  be  con- 
sidered universal.  The  doctrine  of  degrees  of  truth  and 
reality,  advanced  in  Appearance  and  Reality,  would  mean, 


g0  THE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  [80 

then,  the  greater  reality  of  the  more  universal,  while  the 
Absolute  would  be  the  absolutely  universal. 

It  is  easy  to  see  that  the  gap  between  the  real  and  the 
ideal,  between  the  fact  and  its  truth,  is  here  bridged  by  a 
misuse  of  sameness.  It  is  easy  to  see  that  the  universal  is 
made  the  real  by  an  unwarranted  incarnation  of  a  truth 
which  is  only  descriptive  in  its  inception  and  development. 
But  it  is  not  so  easy  to  see  the  motive  which  occasions  the 
procedure.  This  motive  appears  to  lie  in  a  too  ready  iden- 
tification of  the  self-sameness  of  the  universal  (taken  as  an 
ideal  content)  with  that  of  the  permanent  reality.  One  may 
not  rashly  accuse  so  keen  a  thinker  as  Mr.  Bradley  of  error 
in  analysis,  and,  of  course,  the  error  may  be  misunderstand- 
ing, but  it  is  an  error  natural  enough  to  the  logical  point  of 
view.  For  when  we  come  to  ask  what  we  mean  by  the  per- 
sistence of  the  same  thing,  in  time,  we  can  only  represent  it 
ideally  by  means  of  a  universal;  that  is,  by  an  abstraction 
from  the  continuum  of  fact.  We  then  have  a  self-identity 
really  not  different  from  that  of  any  other  universal  symbol, 
and  it  is  even  more  natural  than  with  any  other,  to  treat 
such  an  abstraction  as  the  reality.it  explains.  Herein  we 
err;  for  if  we  adhere  firmly  to  empirical  analysis,  eschewing 
mere  logic,  we  can  hardly  fail  to  see  that  self-identity  in  time 
has  a  definite  psychical  value  of  its  own,  and  that  experi- 
ence of  things  as  persistent  things  is  the  meaning,  as  opposed 
to  the  universal  which  is  the  content,  of  our  representation. 

Discussion  of  explanation  on  the  principle  of  identity  may 
be  closed  with  a  brief  resume  of  its  functions  and  failings. 
To  begin  with,  the  only  perfect  explanation  must  be  the  self- 
identity  of  immediate  intuition.  This  means  that  reality 
must  eventually  be  its  own  significance,  and  the  use  of  both 
'explanation'  and  'identity'  in  the  connection  is  legitimate 
only  when  they  are  taken  to  represent  conceptual  limits.  In 
their  own  right  they  are  redundancies. 


8 1 J  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  WENT  I TY  8  I 

The  real  explanatory  function  of  identity  is  in  quantitative 
descriptions  of  events  and  in  definition  by  means  of  univer- 
sals.  In  these  two  uses  it  may  be  taken  as  the  principle  of 
the  representation  of  repetition  and  sameness  in  experience. 
Again  it  may  be  understood  as  the  principle  of  the  descrip- 
tion of  reality  conceived  as  the  permanent  or  persistent.  In 
all  these  uses  it  is  essentially  the  principle  of  definition. 

Where  explanation  in  identities  fails  is  in  accounting  for 
difference  and  change.  The  whole  qualitative  variation  of 
experience,  represented  by  the  enumerative  series,  is  ignored  ; 
or,  where  an  attempt  to  account  for  it  in  terms  of  sameness 
is  made,  there  always  results  the  contradictory  statement 
that  one  thing  is  something  else,  while  all  we  have  a  right  to 
assert  is  that  one  thing  may  be  represented  by  another. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE   PRINCIPLE   OF   CAUSALITY 

26.  THE  principle  of  causality  is  the  principle  upon  which 
we  explain  the  succession  of  events  in  time.  And  this  suc- 
cession must  always  mean  a  real  discreteness  of  the  events. 
Causation  means  nothing  when  we  say  of  an  unchanging 
thing  that  it  is  the  cause  of  its  continued  sameness ;  the 
cause  of  the  persistence  of  the  self-same  must  be  sought  out- 
side the  identical  content.  For  this  reason  an  attempt  to 
explain  away  causality  on  the  ground  that  we  cannot  find  an 
identical  element  in  the  cause  and  its  effect  (I  refer  to  the 
criticism  in  Appearance  and  Reality}  is  beside  the  point.  It 
is  merely  showing  that  in  a  succession  in  time  no  identity  is 
involved,  which  may  be  granted,  with  reservations,  but  it 
does  not  touch  the  problem  of  causality.  For  we  do  not 
require  any  cause  why  a  thing  should  remain  self-same,  or, 
if  we  do,  we  seek  for  it  outside  the  thing.  What  we  wish  to 
explain  by  causation  is  why  a  thing  becomes  different  from 
what  it  is ;  change  and  difference,  sequence  of  discrete 
events,  is  the  fact  that  gives  birth  to  the  need  for  causal  ex- 
planation. 

But  the  succession  of  events  which  causes  explain  is  not 
mere  uniform  sequence,  as  Hume  and  Mill  would  have  had 
us  believe.  We  may  have  a  uniform  sequence  of  moments 
in  which  a  thing  persists  without  asking  for  any  cause  of 
this  persistence.  We  may  have  a  sequence  of  positions  in 
space  of  a  moving  body  without  asking  for  a  cause  within 
the  series.  Of  a  rolling  stone  we  do  not  say  that  the  cause 
82  [82 


83]  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  CAUSALITY  83 

for  its  motion  at  some  point  n  is  the  fact  that  it  has  just 
passed  m,  but  we  go  back  through  the  series  to  its  dislodg- 
ment  at  a  point  a  to  find  a  '  real '  cause  (for  '  common- 
sense').  It  is  for  this  reason  that  a  physical  causative 
series,  in  so  far  as  it  is  mere  repetition  of  an  activity  quanti- 
tatively the  same,  is  strictly  speaking  not  causation  at  all. 
In  order  to  have  a  genuine  causal  series  it  is  essential  that 
there  should  be  a  succession  of  events  qualitatively  different. 
These  events  must  be  necessarily  connected,  and  it  is  in  the 
nature  of  this  necessity,  rather  than  in  any  uniformity,  that 
the  peculiar  mark  of  causality  is  to  be  sought. 

The  fact  that  uniform  sequence  is  not  the  whole  essence  of 
causation  is  nowhere  better  illustrated  than  in  attempts  to 
explain  psychical  facts  by  association  of  ideas.  A  train  of 
associated  ideas  passes  through  the  mind  in  due  order  and 
sequence,  and  we  describe  them  as  associated  by  similarity 
or  contiguity  of  some  type,  but  we  do  not  consider  this  an 
adequate  explanation.1  We  endeavor  to  account  for  the 
association  either  by  an  appeal  to  brain  mechanism  with  its 
fixed  and  necessary  interconnection,  or  by  some  law  of  psy- 
chical facilitation  and  redintegration,  or,  in  common  ex- 
perience, by  reference  to  the  nature  and  necessity  of  the 
realities  which  the  ideas  represent. 

Necessity  is  implied  in  the  notion  of  regulative  action  of 
any  sort,  and  it  is  this  type  of  action  which  we  term  causal 
or  efficient ;  but  necessity  is  not  restricted  to  activities.  We 
may  speak  of  a  necessity  that  things  should  be  what  they  are 
without  meaning  more  than  that,  perforce,  we  find  them  so. 
But  by  causal  necessity  we  mean  the  necessity  that  they 
should  act  as  they  do.  This  act-as-they-do  is,  to  be  sure,  a 
matter  of  empirical  observation,  and  in  so  far  Hume's  point 
of  view  is  not  unnatural.  Yet  it  overlooks  the  element 
which  makes  causation  reasonable — a  cause  for  a  thing  a 
*Cf.  Wundt,  Human  and  Animal  Psychology. 


84  THE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  [84 

reason  for  it.  This  element  is  the  necessity  of  the  connec- 
tion of  events,  which  we  interpret  as  their  efficiency. 
Efficiency,  ascribed  to  the  external  world,  means  its  ability 
to  act  upon  us,  just  as  our  efficiency  is  our  ability  to  act 
upon  external  events.  We  conceive  the  series  of  events  to 
be  necessary  just  because  we  conceive  the  world  as  a 
mechanism  determined  by  an  efficiency,  if  not  like,  at  least 
represented  by  our  own.  It  is  only  because  the  hard  facts 
of  the  world  resist  our  efforts  to  mould  them  to  our  wish  and 
so  negate  our  consciousness  of  self-sufficiency,  substituting 
for  a  feeling  of  ability  to  do  a  feeling  of  impotence,  that  we 
come  to  conceive  of  necessity  at  all.  And  this  necessity, 
which  we  feel  as  constraint  of  our  activity,  we  conceive  as  a 
constraining  force,  stronger  and  more  imperious  than  our 
own,  but  not  intelligible  except  as  like  ours  in  kind.  Not 
that  we  must  think  of  it  as  dominated  by  intelligence ;  more 
frequently  and  perhaps  with  a  more  naive  truth  we  call  it 
"  brute  "  necessity,  after  all  possibly  the  best  designation  we 
can  have  of  a  power  that  must  always  seem  to  us  blind,  im- 
petuous, imperious,  ruthlessly  destroying  the  puny  handi- 
work of  man  in  building  its  own  greater  house  of  Fate.1 

27. 2  Of  all  analyses  of  the  meaning  of  causation  I  know  of 
none  more  satisfactory  than  that  of  Aristotle.  According  to 
Zeller 3  the  four  causes  which  Aristotle  distinguishes  are  re- 
solvable into  two:  (1)  the  material  cause  and  (2)  the  formal 
or  conceptual,  which  includes  in  its  meaning  all  that  is  con- 
veyed by  efficient  and  final  causation.  But  it  may  be 
suggested  that  possibly  this  reduction  is  based  upon  a  too 

1  Primitive  animism  represents  this  kind  of  personification,  and  doubtless  it  is 
reflected  in  Schopenhauer's  "  blind  will  " — blind  because  the  author  failed  to  per- 
ceive the  implication  of  teleology  in  causal  necessity. 

*  For  the  following  analysis  I  am  mainly  indebted  to  the  lectures  of  Prof.  Wm. 
R.  Newbold,  of  the  University  of  Pennsylvania. 

*  Die  Philosophie  der  Griechen. 


gH-l  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  CAUSALITY  85 

free  extension  of  the  conception  of  the  form  eldog)  as  an  in- 
forming agency  or  moulding  force.  Doubtless  when  Aris- 
totle speaks  of  a  First  Cause  he  does  view  the  formal  cause 
as  pure  efficiency  working  to  an  end ;  but  in  his  dissection 
of  fact  and  of  the  course  of  events  in  the  given  world — that 
is,  in  his  more  empirical  mood— form,  as  matter,  is  really 
viewed  as  a  product  of  last  analysis.  Form,  as  matter,  is 
conceived  as  a  constitutive  element  of  reality,  significant  in 
the  definition  of  being  rather  than  in  that  of  becoming.  If 
we  take  into  consideration  that  previous  to  Aristotle  the 
main  enquiry  of  Greek  philosophy  had  been  for  elements 
rather  than  for  causes,1  that  only  in  Plato's  doctrine  of  the 
implasticity  of  matter  and  its  native  resistance  to  form  have 
we  the  germ  of  the  real  meaning  of  efficiency  (Plato  viewed 
the  Idea  as  being,  not  as  a  cause  of  becoming),2  it  seems 
likely  that  Aristotle  first  conceived  cause  as  an  element 
rather  than  as  an  agent,  and  that  it  is  as  elements  that  matter 
and  form  were  conceived  to  constitute  the  physical  thing. 
In  such  case,  the  four  causes  should  be  classified  :  Elements 
in  the  reality,  or  constitutive  causes, —  (1)  formal,  (2) 
material;  elements  in  the  process  of  becoming, — (1)  mov- 
ing, or  efficient  cause,  (2)  final,  or  teleological  cause. 

But  this  statement  should  be  qualified.  Aristotle,  as 
Plato,  ascribed  to  matter  a  certain  efficacy  of  resistance,  an 
implasticity  which  was  taken  to  be  the  occasion  of  the  im- 
perfections of  the  worlds  And  again,  the  differentiation  of 
being  and  becoming  is  not  strictly  true  to  Aristotle's  teach- 
ing. He  viewed  all  physical  being  as  a  process  or  product 
of  becoming;  and  while  only  a  combination  of  etfos  and 
v'ai)  cpuld  produce  rb  obvoXov,  the  concrete  fact,  yet  since  the 
latter  was  a  result  of  development,  or  yeveaic,  the  elements 

1  Cf.  Aristotle's  Metaphysics,  book  1. 

2  Zeller. 

3  A  fact  which  in  itself  would  modify  Zeller's  statement  of  the  causes. 


86  THE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  [86 

really  were  causes.  I  The  idea  of  teleological  development  is 
inwrought  in  the  very  essence  of  reality  as  so  conceived,  and 
it  is  in  description  of  this  development  that  causation,  in  the 
narrower  sense  of  the  term,  appears.)  It  is  the  efficiency  of 
the  eWof  in  imparting  its  form  to  the  successive  members  of 
the  causal  series  that  gives  rise  to  the  concept  of  efficient  or 
moving  cause.  It  is  the  likeness  of  the  final  product  to 
the  eltog,  conceived  as  the  origination  of  the  developmental 
process,  that  is  accounted  for  by  the  final  or  teleological 
cause,    j 

The  Aristotelian  analysis  never  contemplated  an  interpre- 
tation of  causal  sequence  in  terms  of  identity.  It  is  true 
that  the  transmission  of  form  through  the  developmental 
series  was  direct  from  member  to  member,  and,  though  each 
member  possessed  a  form  of  its  own  partially  modifying  the 
original  eldoc,  still  the  efficiency  transmitted  belonged  to  this 
original  and  in  so  far  there  was  likeness  of  the  original  cause 
throughout.  In  this  sense  Aristotle's  conception  of  efficiency 
was  very  nearly  equivalent  to  the  modern  physical  concep- 
tion, the  difference  lying  in  the  fact  that  physics  employs  a 
quantitative  rather  than  a  qualitative  description.  Again, 
the  final  cause  is  an  interpretation  of  a  sameness  of  the 
original  (formal)  cause  with  its  end  or  realization  in  the 
effect,  but  qua  cause  it  is  really  an  accounting  for  the  varia- 
tion achieved.  What  Aristotle  desired  to  explain  is  change 
in  things  themselves  and  the  genesis  of  one  thing  from 
another,  and  this  he  attempted  by  ascribing  the  change  in 
the  object — which  is  vfo?  with  reference  to  some  e«fos — to  the 
ncarnation  of  the  elfog  in  it. 

28.  In  the  chapter  on  identity  the  quantitative  measure- 
ments of  physical  science  were  treated  as  explanation  on 
that  principle,  although  it  was  conceded  that  the  meaning  of 
the  unit  of  measurement  might  be  causal  efficiency,  that  so 
energy  might  be   conceived.      It  appears   to   me   that  the 


87]  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  CAUSALITY  %j 

hesitating  desire  on  the  part  of  the  physicist  to  rid  himself 
of  the  concept  of  cause  altogether1  arises  from  the  very  fact 
that  in  quantitative  determinations  it  is  superfluous.  It  does 
not  affect  results  whether  the  unit  represent  cause  or  not,  so 
long  as  it  is  but  a  term  in  the  description  of  tin  fait  accompli. 
Nevertheless  the  notion  of  efficiency  is  so  thoroughly  in- 
wrought in  the  meaning  of  concepts  such  as  energy,  force, 
and  work,  that  he  is  loth  to  abandon  causality  altogether; 
for  to  all  the  world  and  time  out  of  mind  causa  efficiens  has 
seemed  something  more  than  half  the  meaning  of  causation. 
But  if  physical  energy  really  is  a  guise  of  causal  efficiency, 
comparison  of  this  with  Aristotle's  efficient  cause  will  readily 
show  that  they  narrowly  correspond.  To  Aristotle  the 
efficient  cause  was  represented  only  by  the  actual  working 
of  the  d&os  along  the  causal  series — its  successive  incarna- 
tions, if  we  may  so  speak — precisely  as  physical  energy 
exists  only  in  its  manifestations  and  embodiments.  Their 
difference  lies  in  the  method  of  estimating  transmission 
through  the  series.  Aristotle,  having  no  knowledge  of  the 
convertibility  of  forces  and  their  consequent  quantitative 
determination,  conceived  transmission  as  qualitative  likeness 
of  cause  and  effect,  and  he  estimated  the  purity  of  the  effect 
— that  is,  its  sole  dependence  upon  a  given  cause — by  the 
perfection  of  this  likeness.  It  would  perhaps  be  repetition 
to  say  that  in  the  end  this  is  exactly  what  the  physicist  does, 
and  that  the  convertibility  upon  which  the  proof  of  his 
equations  rests  is  only  a  final  appeal  to  a  judgment  of  same- 
ness, just  as  his  unit  of  measurement  is  an  appeal  to  con- 
venience. It  is  the  ease  with  which  these  units  can  be 
reproduced  under  varying  conditions  which  enables  the 
equating  of  large  bodies  of  phenomena  in  terms  of  them, 
and  this  gives  rise  to  the  essential  difference  of  the  modern 
view  from  that  of  Aristotle — that  he  recognized  very  many 

1  See  note,  page  70. 


88  THE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  [88 

efficient  ehhi  in  the  universe,  whereas  physics  recognizes  rela- 
tively few  different  kinds  of  energy. 

Efficient  causation  does  not  exhaust  the  concept  of  cause. 
Even  in  its  narrower  usage,  as  descriptive  of  processes  of 
change  and  becoming,  Aristotle  distinguished  a  teleological 
element.  In  the  case  of  volitional  action  we  discriminate 
the  will  to  act  from  the  ability  to  act,  and  it  is  the  latter 
which  we  designate  as  efficiency.  Possibly  in  the  will  itself 
we  can  make  a  further  distinction  of  the  volitional  occasion 
and  the  volitional  intention,  of  the  choice  as  a  fact  which 
inaugurates  action  and  the  chosen  object  which  is  the  aim  of 
this  action.  In  such  case,  it  would  be  only  the  volitional 
intention  which  would  correspond  with  Aristotle's  final 
cause ;  the  volitional  occasion  would  be  represented  by  that 
causa  occasionalis  which  according  to  Sigwart,1  alone  con- 
stitutes the  ground  for  the  proposition  that  the  cause  pre- 
cedes the  effect.  The  distinguishing  of  such  a  cause  from 
the  final  cause  is  of  no  value  either  when  dealing  with 
volitional  actions  or  with  any  strictly  teleological  interpreta- 
tion of  change,  such  as  Aristotle's,  but  doubtless  it  is  of  value 
in  the  case  of  sciences  which  wish  to  pare  their  concepts  to 
minimal  significance. 

There  can  be  no  question  that  in  the  biological  sciences 
the  important  causes  are  just  those  which  demark  the  be- 
ginnings of  a  differentiation.  The  '  tendency  to  vary  ',  of 
so  much  importance  in  evolutional  theory,  is  nothing  less 
than  a  general  designation  of  such  causes.  Of  course,  since 
they  are  not  convertible,  for  the  evolutionary  process  cannot 
be  reversed  by  experiment,  they  are  incapable  of  quantita- 
tive determination ;  and  consequently  we  have  the  relative 
inexactness  of  biological  science,  the  explanations  of  which 
are  necessarily  based  upon  occasioning  causes,  as  compared 
with  the  precision  of  physical  explanations  embodying 
*  Logic,  §73,f  1 8. 


gg-J  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  CAUSALITY  89 

mensurable  efficiency.  But  it  may  be  asked  whether  the 
physicist,  also,  does  not  employ  occasioning  cause  in  his  de- 
scriptions. We  answer :  Never  when  these  descriptions  are 
in  the  form  of  equations ;  always  when  they  represent  his- 
torically specific  fact.  To  explain,  when  the  dictum  causa 
aequat  effectum  is  taken  as  expressing  quantitative  equiva- 
lence rather  than  similiformity,  the  equation  is  equally  true, 
no  matter  which  term  represents  the  cause  and  which  the 
effect.  The  reason  for  this  is  that  both  are  abstractions 
from  the  specific  events,  the  convertibility  of  which  origin- 
ally enabled  the  proposition,  and  they  are  abstractions  of 
the  quantitatively  identical  elements  in  the  two  events.  The 
fact  of  convertibility  gives  no  ground  for  an  assertion  of  like- 
ness nor,  what  is  the  same  thing,  of  an  equation  between  the 
conditions  which  distinguish  the  two  events  from  one  an- 
other, that  is,  their  differences.  It  is  these  differentiating  con- 
ditions that  constitute,  in  each  event,  the  causa  occasionalis 
of  its  consequence.  Either  may  be  condition  and  either 
may  be  consequence,  either  may  be  the  occasioning  cause 
or  its  effect;  but  in  this  sense  of  cause  the  dictum  causa 
aequat  effectum  is  never  true,  and,  as  description  of  historical 
reality,  there  is  never  any  indifference  as  to  which  is  which 
— only  one  of  the  events  can  in  the  specific  instance  be  the 
cause  of  the  other.  The  very  fact  that  the  concept  of  energy 
or  efficiency  can  be  applied  in  the  description  of  widely 
diverse  natural  phenomena,  the  fact  of  its  extreme  abstract- 
ness,  is  what  enables  its  exact  determination.  But  it  is  this 
fact  also  that  renders  it  only  a  partial  description  of  reality. 
It  necessarily  ignores  the  particular  place  and  position  of 
events  in  the  phenomenal  world,  with  reference  to  sequence, 
their  direction,  and  this  is  just  what  makes  them  unique. 
Energy  is  an  abstraction  from,  if  perhaps  also  of,  direction 
and  position.  The  time  and  space  conditions  taken  into 
account  in  physical  calculations  are  essentially  ideal ;   they 


g0  THE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  [g0 

do  not  derive  their  significance  from  any  particular  historical 
context.  And  yet  the  particular  context  must  embody 
every  manifestation  of  energy,  every  event,  and  the  ontolo- 
gical  description  of  the  event  is  not  complete  until  all  that 
makes  it  particular  as  well  as  the  equation  of  energies 
involved  is  set  forth.1 

Physical  description  rests  not  only  upon  the  assumption 
of  the  uniformity  of  nature,  but  also  upon  the  correlative 
assumption  of  a  universal  tendency  to  vary.2  This  is  shown 
clearly  enough  in  Laplace's  nebular  hypothesis,  and  again  in 
the  Spencerian  doctrine  of  evolution  from  homogeneity  to 
heterogeneity.  But  it  is  also  evidenced  wherever  an  equa- 
tional  description  represents  abstraction  from  a  given 
sequence  of  events.  If  real  conditions  were  invariably  taken 
as  mere  or  chance  occasions  of  their  consequents,  events 
ought  always  to  be  described  a  posteriori.  But  if  they  are 
conceived,  as  they  are,  to  imply  the  necessary  occasioning 
of  the  consequents,  we  are  justified  in  expressing  this  fact  in 
the  form  of  scientific  law,  that  is,  as  a  law  of  nature.  But 
we,  then,  no  longer  have  a  mere  causa  occasionalis,  but  an 
Aristotelian  final  cause  in  fullest  sense, — we  have  this  or  we 
profess  prophetic  vision. 

It  is  because  the  concept  of  energy  does  not  comprehend 
the  occasioning  cause  that  the  law  of  the  conservation  of 
energy  cannot  form  the  foundation  of  an  adequate  cosmology 

1  Energy  is  defined  and  measured  by  time,  space  and  gravity;  but  as  units  of 
measurement  are  per  se  always  ideal,  the  time  and  space  considered  are  histor- 
ically indifferent.  Energy  is  also  a  general  aspect  of  phenomena,  since  it  persists 
through  changes  in  them.  These  changes,  particularized  in  time  and  space,  are 
necessarily  ignored  in  the  generalization,  but  at  the  same  time  they  centre  our 
interest  in  cosmic  history. 

2  A  theory  of  cyclical  repetitions  of  the  history  of  the  cosmos  might  do  away 
with  this  second  assumption,  but  it  would  have  to  postulate  exact  reduplication  to 
the  slightest  detail,  so  that  the  bird-call  from  yonder  green,  my  thought  and  action 
of  this  moment,  must  be  repeated  some  cycle  of  aeons  hence.  An  hypothesis  so 
grotesque  and  pathetic  and  useless  could  not  be  taken  seriously. 


^r]  THE  PRIXCIPLE  OF  CAUSALITY  91 

even  of  the  mechanical  type.  Based  as  it  is  upon  induction 
from  an  abstracted  aspect  of  facts — their  energies  only, — it 
can  give  only  a  partial  account  of  them.  Really  the  aspect 
neglected  is  to  us  the  most  important  one ;  for  even  if  it  be 
true  that  the  amount  of  energy  in  the  universe  remains  con- 
stant, this  cannot  explain  why  the  universe  is  a  universe,  or 
why,  or  if,  it  develops  in  particular  directions, — matters,  I 
take  it,  that  focalize  our  ontological  interest.  Again,  it  is 
not  because  energy  is  manifested  in  a  particular  fact,  but  be- 
cause it  is  manifested  in  the  particular  way  which  makes  the 
fact  what  it  is — itself  and  no  other — that  we  are  most  inter- 
ested in  it.  Occasions  for  the  utilization  of  energy  are  what 
meet  practical  need,  and  to  account  for  or  predict  these 
occasions  we  do  not  rely  upon  the  conservation  of  energy 
alone.  If  the  events  are  such  as  come  under  human  control, 
we  appeal  to  human  design  and  will;  if  they  belong  to  the 
extra-human  world,  we  appeal  to  the  order  of  nature,  taking 
some  sort  of  mechanism  for  granted  without  attempting  to 
explain  it,  although  to  satisfy  metaphysical  interests  it  is 
what  we  are  most  anxious  to  have  expounded.1 

29.  It  has  been  shown  often  enough  that  uniform  sequence 
does  not  constitute  an  adequate  description  of  causation ; 
but  in  the  discussion  of  causa  efficiens  and  causa  occasionalis, 
it  has  become  evident  that  only  the  latter  is  essentially  de- 
pendent upon  sequence.  An  equation  of  efficiency  takes  no 
account  of  the  order  in  which  the  equated  terms  are  placed, 
and  they  may  represent  either  sequence  or  concomitance  in 
time.     Indeed,  Sigvvart  holds  that  they  must  be  concomitant.2 

1  In  this  connection  it  may  not  be  amiss  to  point  out  that  if  DesCartes'  concep- 
tion of  volitional  control  over  the  direction  of  energy  is  false,  it  is  not  60  because 
of  any  conflict  with  the  law  of  the  conservation  of  energy,  nor  due  to  any  deduc- 
tion from  this  law  alone,  but  only  to  conflict  with  some  fixed  aspect  of  the  universe 
otherwise  predetermining  mechanical  directions. 

*  Loc.  cit. 


92  THE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  [92 

He  illustrates  by  the  case  of  a  heavy  body  suspended  by  a 
thread :  the  cutting  of  the  thread  occasions  the  fall  of  the 
body,  but  the  attraction  of  gravitation  is  the  efficient  cause 
of  this  fall  and  must  be  conceived  as  exerted  simultaneously 
with  it.  The  same  view  is  expressed  by  Lotze  in  his  doc- 
trine that  forces  exist  only  in  manifestation :  attraction  and 
repulsion  is  merely  expression  of  the  mutual  relations  of 
bodies.1-  If  efficiency  is  to  be  so  conceived,  as  a  sort  of 
sympathetic  rapport  between  cause  and  effect,  it  is  natural  to 
enquire  whether  uniform  concomitance  may  not  be  an  ade- 
quate account  of  efficient  causation. 

The  deficiency  of  uniform  sequence  as  an  account  of  caus- 
ation lies  in  its  failure  to  explain  the  necessity  of  the  causal 
relation.  Uniform  sequence,  as  the  succession  of  day  and 
night,  need  not  be  causal  at  all ;  to  become  so,  the  ante- 
cedents must  compulsorily  determine  the  nature  of  the  con- 
sequents. But  there  is  a  further  necessity — that  there  be 
consequents  from  the  antecedents,  an  outcome  from  given 
conditions ;  and  this  necessity  may  be  ascribed  to  the  effi- 
cient cause.  It  is  the  necessity  that  things  should  interact 
upon  one  another.  Perhaps  the  nearest  we  come  to  a  reali- 
zation of  it  in  ourselves  is  in  mere  volition  to  give  expression 
to  energy,  without  particular  aim,  resulting  in  a  vague  feel- 
ing of  power;  or,  conversely,  it  is  our  feeling  of  helplessness 
in  the  presence  of  other  powers,  as  when  we  "will  the  im- 
possible "  and  experience  only  emotional  reaction.2 

But  whether  this  account  of  efficient  concomitance  is  true 
or  not,  it  is  certain  that  uniform  concomitance  is  not  per  se 
conceived  as  efficient.  The  philosophies  of  both  Spinoza 
and  Leibnitz  bear  testimony  to  this  fact,  and  in  present-day 
thought  the  doctrine  of  psycho-physical  parallelism  in  its 
more  exact  statements.      What,  then,  are  the  distinguishing 

1  Metaphysics,  book  2,  chap.  v. 
*Cf.  Sigwart,  Logic,  §  73,  f  II. 


g3-|  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  CAUSALITY  93 

characteristics  of  efficient  concomitance?  The  most  import- 
ant is  that  injection  of  necessity  which  seems  to  constitute 
for  us  the  real  meaning  of  efficiency  and  which  we  interpret 
in  volitional  feelings.  But  efficient  concomitance  is  also 
characterized  by  the  fact  that  it  is  always,  in  a  sense,  imma- 
nent causation.  That  is  to  say,  in  so  far  as  it  represents 
mutual  response  of  forces,  a  rapport  of  the  two  terms,  it  is 
describing  a  single  event  within  which  lies  its  whole  signifi- 
cance. It  is  an  appeal  to  the  inner  nature  of  things,  the 
relation  that  enables  them  to  come  into  such  relations  with 
one  another  as  to  constitute  new  things.  It  is  interpretation 
of  the  process  of  becoming  in  terms  of  becoming  rather  than 
of  static  identities.  Doubtless  this  is  not  the  original  mean- 
ing of  causa  immanens.  It  is  not  strictly  an  inception  of 
activity  within  a  subject,  but  it  is  an  activity  of  a  subject — 
that  is,  a  becoming  or  doing  of  something ;  and  this,  it  ap- 
pears to  me,  is  all  that  causa  immanens  can  mean.  The 
transeunt  cause  is  significant  only  with  reference  to  the  oc- 
casioning of  an  action ;  it  has  nothing  whatever  to  do  with 
the  causes  operating  within  the  process ;  it  is  concerned 
only  with  the  inauguration  or  aim  of  the  evolution.  The 
transeunt  cause  constitutes  the  external  reason  for  the  be- 
coming of  which  the  immanent  cause  constitutes  the  internal 
description.  A  recognition  of  this  relation  would  obliterate 
that  demand  for  a  static  identity  within  a  causal  process,  the 
impossibility  of  which  leads  Mr.  Bradley  to  reject  causality 
altogether.  The  identity  exists,  but  it  is  an  identity  of  pro- 
cess and  not  of  some  transmitted  element. 

It  should  not  be  inferred  that  the  various  types  of  causa- 
tion differentiated  in  analysis  are  separated  in  actual  exper- 
ience, or  that  they  operate  separately.  Aristotle's  was  the 
sounder  view  when  he  conceived  all  as  operative  in  any  one 
process.  Of  course  we  can  conceive  of  forces  and  efficien- 
cies existing  apart  from  any  real  change — that  is,  as  latent 


94  THE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  [94 

or  potential ;  but  we  should  remember  that  latency  and  po- 
tentiality express  prediction  rather  than  affirmation  of  real- 
ity. And  if  we  accept  the  analysis  of  force  which  asserts  its 
existence  only  in  its  exercise — an  analysis  which  accords 
with  experience — we  cannot  conceive  any  unoccasioned  ex- 
istence of  efficiency. 

Our  interpretation  of  causa  immanens  need  not  be  insisted 
upon.  All  that  it  aims  to  show  is  that  efficiency  is  signifi- 
cant only  in  its  exercise,  and  that  this  cannot  be  found  ex- 
cept in  a  rapport  of  forces,  which,  because  of  their  mutual 
relation,  constitute  an  organic  unity.  Their  mutual  response 
might  be  conceived  as  a  rapid  oscillation  of  action  and  re- 
action, but  more  commonly  is  held  to  be  an  unbroken  con- 
tinuum of  the  involved  forces,  and  so  to  imply  their  temporal 
concomitance  rather  than  succession.  But  uniform  con- 
comitance is  not  in  itself  an  adequate  account  of  the  inter- 
relation of  efficiencies.  We  may  have  coincidental  con- 
comitance as  well  as  sequence ;  as,  for  example,  we  do  not 
assign  any  mutual  dependence  to  railroad  trains  running  on 
the  same  schedule  on  parallel  tracks ;  they  form  no  organic 
unit,  and  so  there  is  no  necessity  attaching  to  their  parallel- 
ism. Necessity  and  immanency  are  the  distinguishing 
characteristics  of  efficient  concomitance.  But  it  must  be 
acknowledged  that  neither  of  these  characteristics  is  satis- 
factory. Necessity  in  external  events  can  only  be  inter- 
preted by  a  projection  of  psychical  feeling ;  positively,  by 
the  volitional  feeling  involved  in  the  will  to  act,  or  in  the 
feeling  accompanying  the  effectual  exercise  of  power, — ■ 
negatively,  by  the  feeling  of  ineffectual  effort,  of  involuntary 
response  to  external  stimuli,  or  of  impotence  and  constraint 
in  face  of  the  blind  operations  of  nature.  Yet  there  seems 
to  be  no  good  reason  why  we  should  hypostatize  human 
volitions  in  order  to  get  necessary  connections  in  change,  or 
why,  since  this  is  so,  we  may  not  reject  the  notion  of  neces- 


9e-|  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  CAUSALITY  95 

sity  altogether.  Nevertheless,  we  do  make  the  hypostatiza- 
tion,  and  in  my  opinion,  as  a  factor  and  consequence  of 
larger  inferences  of  like  kind, — but  these  are  reserved  for  later 
discussion.  The  unsatisfactoriness  of  the  concept  of  im- 
manency and  of  unity  in  change  is  even  greater,  for  to  it  is 
attached  yet  more  ambiguity  than  to  unity  in  the  thing. 
The  difficulties  are  largely  due  to  the  static  nature  of  defi- 
nition. Even  in  the  case  of  the  persistent  thing,  remaining 
the  self-same,  this  was  seen  to  be  the  source  of  serious 
metaphysical  errors  (section  25),  and  in  the  case  of  chang- 
ing and  developing  things  the  difficulties  are  multiplied. 
The  problem  may  resolve  into  a  question  of  utility,  the  sub- 
ject of  persistence  and  the  subject  of  change  may  both  be 
determined  on  a  ground  of  mental  economy  rather  than  of 
necessity,  or,  indeed,  necessity  itself  may  turn  out  to  be  only 
a  kind  of  utility — a  utility  which  has  evolved  into  a  fixed 
characteristic  of  our  thought,  just  as  instinct  is  habit  fixed 
by  evolution.  But  in  any  case,  it  is  not  easy  to  avoid  the 
conviction  that  in  the  nature  of  things  themselves  is  to  be 
found  their  true  ratio  essendi  and  their  ratio  mutandi  as  well. 
It  is  the  merit  of  Aristotle's  account  of  change  that  it 
reckons  with  the  individuality  of  the  process.  The  desire  of 
matter  for  form,  the  desire  of  form  for  incarnation  in  matter, 
is  perhaps  as  good  a  description  as  we  have  of  the  rationale 
of  becoming. 

30.  In  concluding  the  discussion  of  causality,  let  us  briefly 
review  the  analysis  presented.  To  begin  with,  the  concept 
of  cause  was  taken  to  be  always  a  principle  of  explanation 
of  change.  The  Aristotelian  account  of  the  process  of  be- 
coming was  chosen  as  the  typical  true  account,  and  the  Aris- 
totelian final  and  efficient  causes  were  assumed  to  represent 
the  essential  subdivisions  of  causality.  It  was  noted,  how- 
ever, that  in  strict  accord  with  legitimate  usage,  Aristotle's 
final  cause  must  be  yet  further  analyzed  into  (1)  the  essen- 


^g  THE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  [96- 

tial  condition  or  direction-giving  event,  corresponding  to 
causa  occasionalis,  and  (2)  the  aim  or  design,  the  teleological 
cause  in  strict  sense.  Efficiency  was  interpreted  as  the  sim- 
ultaneous action  of  cause  and  effect ;  and  it  was  therefore 
maintained  that  causa  efficients  is  essentially  an  immanent 
cause,  and  in  strictest  sense  the  only  possible  causa  imma- 
nens.  On  the  other  hand,  causa  transiens  was  identified  with 
the  occasioning  or  with  the  final  cause — the  cause  that  marks 
the  inauguration  of  a  process  of  becoming.  But  none  of 
these  types  of  causation  were  taken  to  be  self-subsistent. 
Every  process  of  change  involves  an  exercise  of  efficiency, 
and  also  an  occasion  and  a  consummation.  The  efficient 
cause  is  description  of  the  first,  the  final  cause,  which  might 
be  taken  as  the  definition  of  the  boundaries  of  the  conceptual 
unity  of  the  process,  expresses  the  second  and  the  third. 

There  remains  the  question  of  the  conceivability  of  causa- 
tion ;  for  some  have  doubted  its  reality  upon  this  score.  The 
difficulty  appears  to  spring  wholly  from  a  notion  of  trans- 
mission of  form.  But  '  transmission,'  as  Lotze  shows,  is 
only  a  figure  of  speech  and  ought  not  to  be  conceived  as 
describing  any  esoteric  reality.  The  fact  that  is  to  be  de- 
scribed is  the  unquestionable  fact  of  change  in  phenomena. 
Change  is  not  only  perfectly  conceivable,  aye,  imageabler 
but  it  may  be  doubted  whether  a  thing  is  anything  at  all 
apart  from  what  it  does.  I  do  not  mean  that  it  is  wholly 
activity.  Such  an  abstraction  is  quite  as  false  as  the  com- 
moner one  which  asserts  that  it  is  wholly  static  quality.  The 
fault  lies  in  that  unfortunate  characteristic  of  universal  ideas,, 
hitherto  mentioned,  which  tends  to  give  a  static  rather  than 
a  dynamic  content  to  definition.  We  may  say,  indeed,  that 
the  principle  of  identity,  upon  which  definitions  are  con- 
structed, is  less  true  of  reality  than  that  of  causality — for 
descriptions  based  upon  the  latter  are  forced  to  take  cogniz- 
ance of  the  verbs  of  the  language.     If  the  logic  of  definition 


gy-\  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  CAUSALITY  gy 

were  to  be  revised,  it  might  be  found  that  in  verbal  forms 
lies  a  ready  instrument  for  describing  experiences  of  becom- 
ing and  efficiency  and  of  the  realization  of  design,  all  quite 
as  real  and  intelligible  as  any  experience  of  identical  quali- 
ties which  our  adjectives  and  nouns  describe. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE    PRINCIPLE   OF   SUFFICIENT   REASON 

31.  In  the  chapters  on  identity  and  causality  the  two 
fundamental  principles  upon  which  any  explanation  must  be 
based  have  been  discussed.  Alone  on  the  principle  of 
identity,  it  has  been  said,  is  to  be  conceived  possible  that 
annihilation  of  curiosity  and  seeking  which  must  constitute 
the  final  satisfaction  and  certitude  of  knowledge.  Ultimately 
adequate  knowledge  must  be  immediate  intuition  of  reality 
as  it  is.  But  such  knowledge  is  possible  in  actual  experi- 
ence to  a  very  limited  extent  and  only  in  case  of  the  lesser 
realities  of  life, — realities  of  physical  and  physiological  im- 
portance, no  doubt,  but  not  such  as  can  satisfy  intellectual 
needs  nor  aid  in  the  larger  interests  of  human  life.  For  the 
more  potent  knowledge  we  are  forced  to  rely  upon  repre- 
sentations and  symbols  and  to  explain — account  for  the 
extra-experiential  past  or  predict  the  future — by  means  of 
vicarious  thought.  It  is  in  this  type  of  explanation  that  all 
that  we  call  rational  knowing  is  included,  and  it  is  for  such 
knowing  that  causes  and  ideal  identities  furnish  material. 
On  the  principle  of  identity  we  answer  the  question,  What  is 
reality?  That  is  to  say,  we  define  reality;  and  if  we  under- 
stand thoroughly  what  this  means,  we  recognize  in  our  defi- 
nition an  assertion  of  the  likeness  of  something  not  immedi- 
ately known  to  something  of  whose  nature  immediate  experi- 
ence has  fully  satisfied  us.  In  other  words,  all  representative 
knowledge  of  the  esse  of  a  thing  is  immediate  knowledge  of 
what  the  thing  is  like,  so  that  every  answer  to  the  ontologi- 
98  [98 


99]  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  SUFFICIENT  REASON  99 

cal  question  is  a  simile.  But  definition  can  never  serve  us 
except  as  a  means  of  identifying  events  when  we  find  them. 
It  can  never  tell  us  why  a  thing  is  what  it  is.  The  ontologi- 
cal  inquiry  must  always  be  supplemented  by  a  search  after 
causes;  indeed,  we  might  say  that  it  resolves  itself  into  a 
search  after  causes.  Why  is  our  reality  what  it  is?  is  the 
second  question  which  we  have  to  answer,  and  we  always 
try  to  anwer  it  by  showing  a  course  of  development  whereby 
something  which  was  has  become  that  which  is.  The 
principle  of  causality  aims  to  correct  a  defect  and  supply  a 
deficiency  in  explanations  by  identity.  This  deficiency  lies 
in  the  fact  that  an  account  by  identity  is  always  an  account 
of  something  static  and  self-same.  The  abstract,  fixed  nature 
of  definitive  symbols  necessitates  this,  and  so  renders  every 
definition  not  only  a  simile  but  a  simile  that  cannot  be  true 
to  the  fact.  For  the  fact  of  the  world  is  as  much  fact  of  be- 
coming as  of  being;  not  more,  not  less,  since  one  cannot  be 
found  without  the  other.  Causal  description  at  its  best  is  a 
full  description  of  a  process  of  becoming.  It  is  a  series  of 
definitions,  perhaps,  but  the  qualities  defined  are  localized 
in  time  and  space,  and  furthermore  causal  definition  is  dis- 
tinguished from  definition  by  identity  in  its  reference  to  de- 
terminism and  necessity.  Determinism,  interpreted  in  the 
only  language  that  enables  us  to  understand  its  meaning,  the 
language  of  human  volitional  activity,  is  the  obverse  ex- 
pression for  the  world's  activity, — its  volition  or  automatism, 
as  you  choose.  In  this  final  sense  causal  explanation  is 
found  to  be  based  upon  identity,  for  it  refers  to  an  immediate 
experience  (of  volition)  which  is  taken  to  be  the  essential 
nature  of  the  dumb  activity  of  things.  But  causal  explana- 
tion also  tells  us  that  a  thing  is  what  it  becomes,  because  it 
never  is  anything  at  all  apart  from  becoming;  and  in  this  it 
gives  a  truer,  because  more  particular,  explanation  than  can 
be  one  which  asserts  that  a  thing  is   what  it  is  like.     Causal 


100  THE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  [IOo 

description  avoids  that  error  of  universality  which  besets 
mere  definition  (except  in  case  pure  efficiency,  which  is  a 
universal,  be  counted  a  whole  cause),  and  it  does  this  by 
particularizing  in  time  and  space.  Yet  particularization 
alone  does  not  constitute  the  whole  of  what  we  mean  by 
rendering  intelligible.  Definitive  identification  is  quite  as 
essential  to  understanding  as  orientation  of  the  event. 
Hence  it  is  that  both  principles  are  involved  in  the  sufficient 
reason  for  anything. 

The  principle  of  the  sufficient  reason  was  formulated  by 
Leibnitz.  In  the  well-known  passage  in  the  Theodicce* 
he  counts  the  "determining"  reason  and  the  principle  of 
contradiction  the  two  great  principles  of  reasoning.  The 
principle  of  contradiction  is,  of  course,  only  the  negative 
expression  of  the  principle  of  identity ;  but  the  determining 
reason  is  not,  in  Leibnitz's  mind,  the  same  as  causality.  It 
is,  he  says,  the  principle  "  that  nothing  happens  without  a 
cause,  or  at  least  a  determining  reason,  that  is  something 
which  may  serve  to  render  a  reason  a  priori  why  something 
is  existent  rather  than  non-existent,  and  why  it  exists  as  it 
is  rather  than  otherwise  "  ;  wherein  it  is  plain  that  the  reason 
is  distinguished  from  the  cause.  In  definitions  of  the  suffi- 
cient reason  elsewhere  r  and  in  the  use  of  this  principle  to 
prove  the  existence  of  God,  Leibnitz  shows  that  it  was 
formulated  in  response  to  an  intellectual  need  for  a  supple- 
mentation of  the  concept  of  cause.  In  later  German  thought 
the  distinction  between  Grund  and  Ursache  points  the  same 
need.  With  Hegel  Grund  is  a  category  of  the  essence  of  a 
thing — its  raison  d'etre  as  ultimately  present  in  the  thing 
itself;  it  might  include  causes,  but  it  is  more  than  these,  for 
the  causes  are  always  particular,  whereas  the  ground  ex- 
presses universal   relations  and  so  relations  of  being.     The 

1  Part  I ,  sec.  44. 

'  Principtt  dt  la  Nature  et  de  la  Gr&ce,  sec.  7. 


IOI]  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  SUFFICIENT  REASON  IOI 

ground,  as  also  the  sufficient  reason,  always  relates  to  some 
answer  to  the  problem  of  ontology ;  that  answer  must  tell  us 
not  only  what  the  reality  is,  but  also  what  it  does  or  be- 
comes, and  consequently  it  must  include  both  the  definition 
and  the  causes  of  that  for  which  it  accounts.  Again,  the 
sufficient  reason  must  tell  what  reality  means  for  us,  and  so 
must  satisfy  the  demand  for  teleological  reason, — but  for  the 
thorough  understanding  of  this  it  is  necessary  to  ask  after 
the  precise  meaning  of  the  ontological  query. 

32.  The  great  question  for  philosophy  is  the  why  of  the 
world.  And  to  it  there  is  but  one  form  of  answer — because. 
The  sufficiency  of  this  answer  depends  entirely  upon  our 
need.  To  the  child  the  mere  word,  the  form  of  an  answer, 
may  suffice.  "  It  is  so  because  it  is."  To  the  savage  an 
animistic  interpretation  is  competent  satisfaction.  He 
understands  nature  by  finding  in  it  the  likeness  of  his  own 
soul :  the  tree  tosses  its  branches  because  it  is  in  pain,  the 
wind  is  the  wrath  of  a  god.  But  the  civilized  analyst  is  not 
content  with  anthropomorphic  and  psychomorphic  anal- 
ogies. He  seeks  for  a  reason  within  the  inmost  nature  of 
reality  itself,  and  in  order  to  get  this  reason  he  strives  to 
find,  first,  what  reality  is  and  what  its  essence.  Thus  is  born 
the  ontological  query,  which  even  Aristotle  calls  the  "  old  " 
query. 

But  the  question,  What  is  reality?  is  not  in  itself  a  final 
one.  It  is  asked  only  that  we  may  answer  the  more  intimate 
question,  Why  is  our  reality  what  it  is?  or,  Why  do  things 
act  as  they  do?  We  want  to  get  hold  of  the  essence  or 
being  of  reality  just  in  order  that  we  may  understand  the 
why  of  the  world  that  is  given  us.  We  want  a  reason  for 
this  world,  its  'because'.  Existence  means  nothing  more 
to  us  than  the  ground  for  our  experience  and  the  ground  for 
our  knowledge  of  what  is  beyond  the  content  of  the  given. 
It  is  only  as  furnishing  grounds  and  reasons — answers  to  our 


1 02  THE  PR  OBLEM  OF  ME  TAPHZSICS  [  l  Q2 

4  whys  ' — that  an  ontological  theory  seems  satisfying  to  us, 
and  it  is  only  for  the  sake  of  these  that  we  require  such  a 
theory.  In  a  way  the  problem  of  ontology  is  a  false  prob- 
lem. It  cannot  be  answered  except  by  metaphors.  The 
one  reality  the  esse  of  which  we  can  and  do  know  is  the 
reality  that  is  immediately  ours.  But  our  reality  is  finite 
and  bounded  by  our  impotence.  It  compels  us  to  infer 
reality  beyond  it.  And  it  is  because  of  this  and  because 
even  over  the  real  that  is  known  to  us  we  have  no  uncon- 
strained control,  that  we  ask  the  why  of  it  and  try  to  find  an 
answer  in  the  essence  of  that  which  is  beyond. 

Such  is  the  nature  of  the  question:  what  of  the  answer? 
It  appears  to  me  certain  that  the  only  finally  satisfactory 
ancwer  must  be  one  which  interprets  being  in  terms  of  mean- 
ing; that  is,  the  sufficient  reason  for  anything  must  be  found 
in  its  purpose  and  intention.  It  was  such  a  reference  to 
purpose  that  forced  Leibnitz  to  find  in  God  the  sufficient 
reason  for  everything,  and  in  the  need  for  the  reason  a  proof 
of  His  existence.  Again,  it  is  such  a  reference  that  gives 
the  ontological  answer  its  seeming  satisfactoriness,  for,  taken 
as  a  whole,  the  universe  cannot  mean  anything  more  than  it 
is.  Finally,  it  is  the  lack  of  such  reference  that  forms  the 
ground  of  our  repugnance  to  the  conception  of  chaos  and  of 
our  instinctive  feeling  of  the  inadequacy  of  a  merely  mechan- 
ical view  of  the  world. 

If  the  universe  means  anything  for  itself,  it  must  be  that 
meaning.  But  we  can  never  know  what  it  really  is,  and  in 
any  event  its  meaning  for  itself  and  its  being  is  of  interest  to 
us  only  in  so  far  as  it  reveals  its  meaning  for  us.  Its  mean- 
ing for  us  is  what  we  are  vitally  interested  in.  We  want  to 
know  what  it  is  going  to  do  with  us  and  what  is  the  part  we 
play  in  it.  The  problem  of  meaning  is  the  problem  of  tel- 
eology, and  every  ontology  is  only  propaedeutic  to  its  solu- 
tion.    Our    real    ontological    interest    lies     in    discovering 


103-|  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  SUFFICIENT  REASON  I03 

whether  the  world  is  blind  or  intelligent.  If  the  answer  be 
given  that  it  is  intelligent,  we  are  apt  to  take  this  as  a  final 
satisfaction  of  our  philosophical  inquiry,  for  the  reason  that 
intelligence  implies  purpose  or  plan  of  some  sort.  On  the 
other  hand,  if  we  are  told  that  the  reality  of  the  world  is 
senseless  force,  content  or  not,  we  are  compelled  to  abandon 
any  teleological  inquiry  as  useless;  and  then  we  come  back 
to  the  brute  fact  and  try  to  create  a  meaning  within  the  bar- 
ren domain  that  is  left  to  us.  It  is  an  emaciated,  feeble  pur- 
pose that  we  find,  not  the  vital  meaning  which  is  the  full 
hunt  of  a  hale  teleology,  but  even  those  sciences  which  rest 
most  narrowly  upon  the  assumption  of  blind  mechanism  can- 
not wholly  escape  it. 

33.  A  reason  for  any  particular  thing  may  lie  in  the  nature 
of  the  thing  itself  or  in  its  causes.  For  example,  if  we  ask 
in  regard  to  a  piece  of  metal,  why  is  it  lustrous?  we  are 
likely  to  be  answered,  because  lustre  is  characteristic  of  all 
metals.  And  again,  if  we  ask  concerning  a  rounded  pebble, 
why  is  it  smooth?  the  answer  will  be  that  the  action  of 
waves  has  caused  its  smoothness.  And  such  reasons  may 
satisfy  us ;  that  is,  they  may  seem  to  us  sufficient  reasons 
for  the  phenomena.  But  if  they  do  so,  it  is  only  for  one  of 
two  causes:  either  because  our  need  and  our  curiosity  is 
limited,  or  else  because  a  further  reason  is  implied,  though 
not  expressed,  in  the  answer.  This  further  reason,  with  re- 
spect to  the  particular  fact  asked  about  and  the  particular 
answer  given,  is  always  an  assumption.  In  the  case  of  the 
metal  it  is  the  assumption  that  a  peculiar  lustre  is  a  necessary 
characteristic  of  all  metals.  In  the  case  of  the  pebble  it  is 
the  assumption  that  it  is  the  natural  action  of  waves  to 
smooth  pebbles.  These  may  be  inductions  from  actual  ex- 
perience ;  we  may  have  observed  such  facts ;  but  with  refer- 
ence to  the  new  fact  in  hand,  for  which  the  induction  is  made 
to   account,  the   likeness  in  nature  is  purely  assumed.     To 


104  THE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  [104 

be  sure  where  the  quality  asked  about  is  directly  given  and 
is  contained  in  the  definition  of  the  thing,  as  the  lustre  of 
the  metal,  we  may  be  said  to  have  a  new  instance  of  the  gen- 
eral truth  which  is  given  as  a  reason ;  and  in  consequence 
we  are  apt  to  say  that  such  a  reason  is  no  real  reason,  mean- 
ing by  real  reason  a  cause.  But  in  fact  the  assumed  gener- 
ality is  the  reason,  and  this  is  true  whether  the  universal 
taken  be  definitive  or  causal.  Let  us  take  another  example. 
We  ask  the  why  of  a  certain  perfume,  and  then,  perceiving 
a  vase  of  roses,  answer  ourselves,  because  of  the  roses.  Now 
it  may  be  that,  questioned,  we  should  say  that  the  roses 
caused  the  perfume,  but  we  are  quite  as  likely  to  say  that  a 
sweet  odor  is  characteristic  of  roses.  Yet  the  characteristic 
is  not  contained  in  the  definition  of  rose,  for  not  all  roses  are 
odorous.  Our  real  reason  is  again  a  general  truth  which  is 
inferred  from  the  greater  or  less  constancy  of  the  like  char- 
acteristic in  our  previous  experience ;  but  for  the  new  in- 
stance, until  we  have  experimentally  tested  it  and  so  deter- 
mined that  the  perfume  is  indeed  sprung  from  the  vase  of 
roses,  there  is  an  assumption  and  it  lies  in  the  assumption  of 
uniformity.  All  sufficient  reasons  implicitly  refer,  at  the 
least,  to  the  stability  and  uniformity  of  nature — itself,  as  Mill 
says,  an  inductive  inference  and  at  the  same  time  an  assump- 
tion underlying  all  other  inferences.  But  whether  this  is  the 
sole  reference  of  the  sufficient  reason  remains  yet  to  be  seen. 
In  order  that  it  may  represent  even  minimum  adequacy  of 
reason,  the  conception  of  the  uniformity  of  nature  must  be 
modified  in  two  ways.  First,  it  must  be  necessary  uniform- 
ity and  not  mere  uniformity.  It  must  represent  some  sort  of 
determinism.  This  determinism  may  be  only  subjective, 
only  the  necessity  which  given  antecedents  exert  over  their 
consequents  for  thought,  but  it  is  essential  to  any  generaliza- 
tion or  any  induction  from  the  facts,  and  necessary  to  what 
we  call  a  law  or  principle  of  anything.     In  itself  and  apart 


105]  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  SUFFICIENT  REASON  IC>5 

from  necessity,  uniformity  is  not  inconsistent  with  chaos ;  if 
there  is  no  inner  need  of  the  facts,  that  they  should  be  what 
they  are,  there  is  no  reason  why  a  perfectly  uniform  world 
might  not  be  conceived  chaotic.1  This  is  plain  enough  when 
we  conceive  nebular  homogeneity;  for  this,  while  represent- 
ing perfect  qualitative  uniformity,  might  be  pure  chaos,  and 
must  be  chaos  unless  ordered  and  governed  by  natural  law. 
But  in  the  conception  of  such  law  it  is  impossible  to  escape 
the  jussive  necessity  which  originally  pertained  to  the  notion 
of  legal  order.  We  have  a  natural  repugnance  to  the  notion 
of  chaos,  doubtless  due  to  the  fact  that  it  seems  to  us  only 
an  expression  of  whim  and  caprice  (honest  prerogatives  only 
of  children  and  coquettes).  In  the  reasonless  rule  of  a  Cali- 
ban we  have  uniformity, — 

"  Am  strong  myself  compared  to  yonder  crabs 
That  march  now  from  the  mountain  to  the  sea; 
Let  twenty  pass,  and  stone  the  twenty-first, 
Loving  not,  hating  not,  just  choosing  so," — 

but  it  is  a  uniformity  that  allows  of  no  generalization  and  no 
expression  of  law  and  order.  It  is  motiveless  and  meaning- 
less. It  may  possibly  be  the  ultimate  truth  of  nature,  but  if 
so  all  our  knowledge  is  false  and  all  our  science  vain. 

Necessary  uniformity  is,  then,  the  real  meaning  of  the 
assumption  of  the  uniformity  of  nature.  But  necessity  is 
only  to  be  understood  in  terms  of  volition.  Mill  appears  to 
recognize  this  in  his  discussion,  for  he  speaks  of  the  essen- 
tial laws  of  nature  as  the  fewest  volitions  that  can  be  assumed 
to  account  for  observed  facts.2  Of  course  it  may  be  held 
that  the  will  assumed  is  "blind  will,"  though  whether  the 
conception  of  volition  can  legitimately  be  used  apart  from 
some  notion  of  a  willed  object  or  end — that  is,  an  intelligent 

1  See  Lotze's  Metaphysics,  Introduction. 
1  Essentials  of  Logic,  vol.  i,  p.  383. 


1 06  THE  PR  OBLEM  OF  ME  TAPH  YSICS  [  x  0<5 

will — may  well  be  an  open  question.  But  granting  this  pos- 
sible, it  is  not  yet  evident  that  any  determinism  can  quite  do 
away  with  the  notion  of  such  an  end. 

In  the  preceding  chapter  (section  28),  I  pointed  out  that 
the  principle  of  the  uniformity  of  nature  is  correlative  with 
the  tendency  to  vary.1  And  this  tendency  is  the  second 
modification  necessary  to  the  rationality  of  that  principle. 
The  two  hypotheses  are  sometimes  expressed  together  as 
'uniform  variation.'  But  'tendency  to  vary'  means  more 
than  'uniform  variation';  it  means  a  tendency  to  vary  in 
some  particular  direction.  It  means  that  the  differentiation 
of  the  consequent  is  necessitated  by  its  antecedent,  and  so 
that  the  succession  of  events  is  thoroughly  articulate.  And 
such  articulation  demands  necessarily  some  terminus  ad  quern 
that  must  be  the  normal  goal  of  the  variation  (of  course  this 
need  not  be  a  static  end).  The  conception  of  the  necessity 
of  change  is  just  as  essential  to  science  as  that  of  the  neces- 
sity of  uniformity  which  it  supplements.  It  is  expressed 
most  simply  in  physics  as  the  tendency  of  force  to  exert 
itself  along  the  line  of  least  resistance,2  and  again  and  more 
fully  in  biological  science  in  the  doctrine  of  evolution.  It 
appears,  then,  that  in  any  case  a  certain  modicum  of  tele- 
ology  is   retained.      An   end   of    all    physical    evolution    is 

1  The  phrase,  "  tendency  to  vary,"  is,  from  a  standpoint  of  blind  determinism, 
unfortunate.  For  '  tendency '  certainly  implies  option,  or  at  least  a  possible 
failure  to  follow  the  tendency,  and  this  is  fatal  to  mere  mechanism.  But  what  is 
ordinarily  meant  by  the  tendency  to  vary  is  just  the  fact  of  change  in  the  world. 
The  word  '  tendency '  is  merely  an  expression  for  the  latitude  which  the  ignor- 
ance of  the  observer  compels  him  to  allow.  If  he  is  a  thorough  mechanist  he 
cannot  believe  in  its  objective  existence. 

2  But  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  the  concept  of  "  path  of  least  resistance  "  can 
mean  anything  real,  because  of  its  absolute  universality.  There  is  never  any 
option,  and  consequently  nothing  from  which  it  can  be  discriminated.  If  a  force 
should  pursue  a  path  seemingly  not  the  one  offering  least  resistance,  we  should 
not  take  that  seeming  to  be  the  fact,  but  would  judge  ourselves  to  have  been  in 
error.     No  absolutely  universal  phenomenon  can  discriminate  anything. 


I07]  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  SUFFICIENT  REASON  10y 

assumed,  definite  and  foreordained,  which  with  sufficient 
prescience  could  be  known  in  all  its  detail.  But  such  pre- 
science would  have  to  be  representation,  and  it  is  on  denial 
of  representative  knowledge  in  connection  with  physical 
evolution,  not  on  denial  of  its  working  toward  some  end, 
that  the  case  of  mechanical  determinism,  as  cosmology, 
ultimately  rests. 

34.  It  appears,  then,  that  even  in  minimal  signification,  in 
the  natural  world,  any  sufficient  reason  for  phenomena  rests 
upon  cosmological  presuppositions  and  implicitly  involves 
some  sort  of  Weltanschauung  as  the  basis  of  its  rationality. 
In  the  physical  sciences  these  presuppositions  are,  to  use 
Mill's  expression,  represented  by  the  fewest  possible  volitions 
that  can  be  conceived  to  account  for  observed  facts.  The 
position  of  mechanical  determinism  may,  indeed,  be  described 
as  an  effort  to  solve  the  problem  of  teleology  upon  the  law 
of  parsimony.  It  takes  the  fewest  possible  assumptions  to 
constitute  the  sufficient  reason.  These  assumptions  are: 
(1)  the  uniformity  of  nature,  or  the  uniform  variation  of 
phenomena;  (2)  the  necessity  of  the  course  of  nature, — de- 
terminism rather  than  chaos  ;  (3 )  a  tendency  to  vary,  and  to 
vary  in  a  determined  direction, — cosmical  evolution.  These 
assumptions  are  rendered  intelligible  to  us  by  the  analogy  of 
human  volitional  activity,  but  there  is  still  question  whether 
the  volition  shall  be  assumed  to  be  rational  or  blind.  This 
question  rests  entirely  upon  evidence,  it  must  be  answered 
by  interpretation  of  empirical  facts ;  but  it  is  essentially  the 
problem  of  metaphysics  and  only  per  accidens  a  concern  of 
science. 

To  render  this  clear,  let  us  briefly  review.  A  thing  may 
be  accounted  for,  it  has  been  said,  either  on  the  principle  of 
identity  or  on  that  of  causality,  but  in  either  case  the  suffici- 
ent reason  which  makes  such  explanation  seem  valid  is  an 
assumed  universal  under  which  the  particular  fact  to  be  ac- 


1 08  THE  PR OBLEM  OF  ME  TAPH  YSICS  r  r  0g 

counted  for  is  subsumed.  This  universal  is  always  some 
character  of  the  nature  of  reality;  and  thus  we  are  confronted 
with  the  problem  of  ontology  the  very  task  of  which  is  to 
tell  us  what  the  nature  of  reality  is.  But  when  we  come  to 
analyze  the  meaning  of  the  esse  of  reality,  we  find  it  to  be 
significare :  the  existence  of  anything  for  us  is  its  meaning 
for  us :  that  is  what  constitutes  its  rationality  and  makes  it  a 
ground  or  reason  for  what  we  wish  to  explain.  Meaning, 
however,  is  fully  significant  only  in  the  sense  of  purpose  and 
design,  that  is,  as  volition.  Eventually  this  volition  must  be 
conceived  to  be  intelligent  if  the  reason  shall  be  wholly  ade- 
quate;  for  if  human  will  to  act  is  man's  only  measure  of  the 
intelligibility  of  world-activities,  so  human  reason  is  the  only 
measure  of  the  intelligibility  of  world- rationality,  and  pur- 
pose similar  to  human  purpose  is  for  us  the  only  possible 
sufficient  reason.  The  ontological  problem  thus  resolves 
itself  into  the  teleological,  and  it  is  only  because  of  their 
implied  teleology  that  the  great  metaphysical  ontologies 
have  seemed  to  be  satisfactory  solutions  of  the  philosopher's 
quest. 

But  there  is  another  sense  in  which  the  ontological  prob- 
lem is  properly  propaedeutic  to  the  teleological,  and  this  is 
where  it  is  taken  as  the  problem  of  science.  For  ontology 
is  the  definition  and  description  of  reality,  and  it  is  the  whole 
business  of  the  natural  sciences  to  describe,  so  far  as  may 
be,  what  the  world  is,  that  is,  to  record  and  chart  all  phe- 
nomenal facts.  Such  description  must  always  be  on  the 
principles  of  identity  and  causality,  and  with  the  assumption 
of  a  determining  reason.  The  problem  of  science  so  con- 
sidered cannot  possibly  conflict  with  the  metaphysical  prob- 
lem of  teleology.  The  object  of  the  latter  is  interpretation 
of  scientific  facts  in  terms  of  meaning,  and  that  can  only  be 
by  an  elucidation  of  the  sufficient  reason  involved  in  the 
cosmological  assumptions  which  form  the  basis  of  science. 


109]  THE  PRINCIPLE   0F  SUFFICIENT  REASON  YOg 

It  is  manifest  that  between  the  description  of  facts  and  the 
interpretation  of  them  through  these  assumptions  there  can 
be  no  antagonism.  But  historically  there  has  existed  oppo- 
sition between  mechanical  and  other  types  of  cosmology 
wherein  the  former  has  seemed  to  represent  the  scientific  as 
opposed  to  metaphysical  views.  Really  the  whole  field  of 
difference  is  metaphysical,  and  the  conflict  has  occurred, 
not  in  connection  with  the  description  of  facts,  but  in  inter- 
pretations of  the  teleological  import  of  nature.  In  general 
the  questions  at  issue  have  been  as  to  what  constitutes  the 
sufficient  reason  for  reality,  and  whether  a  sufficient  reason 
in  the  sense  of  intelligent  purpose  really  exists  or  not. 

35.  Most  of  the  arguments  for  the  intelligence  of  the 
motif  of  the  universe  are  analogies  drawn  from  the  rational 
and  volitional  psychology  of  the  human  mind.  It  is  not 
necessary  to  enter  into  a  discussion  of  them  here,  but  it  may 
be  remarked  en  passant  that  a  demand  that  the  design  must 
be  shown  in  order  to  prove  its  existence  is  not  altogether 
rational,  since  we  ordinarily  judge  the  existence  of  intelli- 
gence from  fragmentary  and  meagre  signs,  while,  certainly, 
comprehension  of  plan  is  not  prerequisite  to  perception  of 
it  as  fact. 

Of  ontological  theory  there  are  many  types,  and  a  few 
may  be  here  noted  with  reference  to  their  teleological  signi- 
fication. Materialism  is  characteristically,  though  not  neces- 
sarily, taken  to  imply  mechanical  determinism.  So  far  as 
teleology  is  concerned  it  is  a  theory  of  blind  activity.  Its 
difficulties  are  the  difficulties  of  all  theories  which  endeavor 
to  identify  evolving  differences  in  some  homogeneous  sub- 
stratum :  if  the  substrate  be  made  absolutely  universal,  it 
ceases  to  be  a  useful  or  even  significant  concept ;  if,  on  the 
other  hand,  a  plurality  of  substrata  be  postulated,  all  the 
difficulties  that  attend  the  interaction  of  a  plurality  of  quali- 
ties or  attributes  follow,  while  the  conception  of  substrate  is 


1 10  THE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  \\\0 

again  superfluous.  A  second  position  is  Berkeleyan  ideal- 
ism, which  transfers  to  God's  consciousness,  and  to  other 
consciousnesses,  the  whole  content  of  experience.  Teleo- 
logically  this  view  might  be  made  satisfying,  but  it  would 
have  to  be  made  more  than  a  monad-like  reduplication  of 
experiences,  which  fails  to  solve  the  problems  of  any  one. 
Hegelian  idealism  explains  the  world  as  the  evolution  of  an 
Absolute.  The  inconsistency  inherent  in  the  notion  of  an 
Absolute  evolving  toward  an  end  not  already  realized  in  itself 
leads  to  the  nihilism  (it  is   nothing  less)  of  Mr.  Bradley.1 

1  Hegel's  Absolute  represented  a  process  rather  than  a  static  content,  but  at  the 
same  time  the  process  was  conceived  to  be  completed,  and  it  is  only  an  Hegelian 
who  can  reconcile  the  notions  of  an  evolution  at  once  active  and  ended.  Where 
the  completeness  is  taken  to  represent  the  perfection  of  the  form  of  the  activity 
and  not  its  fruition,  the  doctrine  is  intelligible.  But  the  notion  of  activity  is  sub- 
ject to  strange  misuses.  Self-activity,  for  example,  is  perfectly  intelligible  so  long 
as  it  is  taken  to  mean  an  activity  originating  with  a  given  subject.  But  if  self- 
activity  be  taken  to  mean  subjectless  activity,  it  is  quite  unintelligible.  Again,  we 
meet  the  phrase  "  unchanging  activity";  and  this,  too,  is  clear  if  it  means  an  un- 
changing form  of  activity.  But  if  it  means  an  activity  in  which  there  is  no 
change  (cf.  "  On  the  Conception  of  kvipyeta  anivfioiai;"  by  F.  C.  S.  Schiller, 
Mind,  vol.  ix,  N.  S.),  it  is  nonsensical.  Activity  may  be  conceived  either  as 
motion  or  as  change.  Motion  always  involves  change  in  space,  but  change,  as 
of  thought,  may  be  merely  in  time.  If,  in  saying  that  the  Absolute  is  activity, 
motion  is  meant,  the  thing  is  confounded  with  its  measure.  But  if  the  activity 
of  the  Absolute  be  understood  as  thought  activity,  there  is  encountered  a  curious 
consequence.  For  thought  which  involves  universal  ideas  is  essentially  represen- 
tative, and  true  of  some  reality  other  than  itself.  Now  if  the  Absolute  itself  is 
thought,  it  can  be  true  of  no  reality,  for  there  is  but  one  Absolute  and  it  is  the 
reality.  In  such  case  the  Absolute  would  be  nothing  but  a  colossal  fiction,  and 
this  is  pretty  nearly  what  Mr.  Bradley  offers.  In  a  passage  in  his  Principles 
of  Logic  (p.  449)  he  answers  the  question,  What  should  we  get  if  we  were  to 
realize  our  ideal  of  what  reality  must  be?  "  We  should  get  a  way  of  thinking  in 
which  the  whole  of  reality  was  a  system  of  its  differences  immanent  in  each  dif- 
ference. In  this  whole  the  analysis  of  any  one  element  would,  by  nothing  but 
the  self- development  of  that  element,  produce  the  totality.  The  internal  unfold- 
ing of  any  one  portion  would  be  the  blossoming  of  that  other  side  of  its  being, 
without  which  itself  is  not  consummate.  The  inward  growth  of  the  member 
would  be  the  natural  synthesis  with  the  complement  of  its  essence.  And  synthesis 
again  would  be  the  movement  of  the  whole  within  its  own  body.     It  would  not 


I  I]  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  SUFFICIEA  T  REASON  £  i  t 

He  accepts  the  contradictions  of  experience  as  proof  of  our 
inability  to  know,  and  then  hypostatizes  the  unintelligible  as 
an  Absolute,  not  essentially  different  from  Mr.  Spencer's 
Unknowable.  Another  view  is  that  of  Prof.  Royce,  who  sees 
in  the  Absolute  an  apotheosized  self,  the  Individual.  At 
first  sight,  this  is  eminently  satisfying;  but  when  we  try  to 
find  the  self  that  we  know — which  serves  as  the  basis  for  the 
metaphor, — we  cannot  identify  it  with  any  segregated  part  of 
experience.  Yet  if  we  include  objective  as  well  as  subjective 
experience  in  this  self,  we  must  thereby  include  that  refer- 
ence to  a  ground  beyond,  which  first  impelled  the  inference 
of  an  absolute.  Nor  can  we  well  avoid  including  this  refer- 
ence in  the  being  of  the  Absolute  Self  drawn  on  the  analogy 
of  our  own,  while  if  we  do  include  it,  we  are  led  into  an 
infinite  series  of  selves  and  absolutes,  each  referring  to 
another,  which  shall  serve  as  its  ground.  The  same  diffi- 
culty appears  again  when  we  ask,  Can  the  Absolute  know 
representatively?  If  it  can,  there  exist  the  known  realities 
not  contained   in  the  Absolute  experience,  but  only  there 

force  its  parts  into  violent  conjunctions,  but,  itself  in  each,  by  the  loss  of  self- 
constraint  would  embrace  its  own  fulfillment.  And  the  fresh  product  so  gained 
would  renew  this  process,  where  self-fission  turns  to  coition  with  an  opposite  and 
the  merging  of  both  in  a  higher  organism.  Nor  would  the  process  cease  till,  the 
whole  being  embraced,  it  had  nought  left  against  it  but  its  conscious  system. 
Then,  the  elements  knowing  themselves  in  the  whole  and  so  self  conscious  in 
one  another,  and  the  whole  so  finding  in  its  recognized  self-development  the  un- 
mixed enjoyment  of  its  completed  nature,  nothing  foreign  would  trouble  the  har- 
mony. It  would  all  have  vanished  in  that  perfected  activity  which  is  the  rest  of 
the  absolute."  As  poetry  such  an  Absolute  is  all  very  well,  but  as  "  a  way  of 
thinking  "  it  is  meaningless.  What  we  have  in  it  is  a  process  that  never  runs  its 
course,  a  tension  of  complete  analysis  and  complete  synthesis  the  elements  of 
which  absolutely  coincide.  There  could  be  no  motion  and  no  change  in  it,  lest 
the  whole  lose  its  equipoise  and  become  infected  with  the  poison  of  relativity. 
It  is  absurd  to  speak  of  such  a  state  of  eternal  balance  as  activity — more  absurd 
to  liken  it  to  thought,  for  we  cannot  conceive  thinking  except  as  a  process  and  a 
thinking  of  something.  A  paralysis  of  ideas  such  as  this  Absolute  could  be  no 
thinking  at  all. 


r  1 2  THE  PR OBLEM  OF  ME TA PHYSICS  [u2 

represented.  On  the  other  hand,  if  it  cannot  know  repre- 
sentatively, is  not  the  supreme  characteristic  by  which  we 
find  in  ourselves  that  organic  intelligence  which  makes  us 
individuals  done  away  with?  Should  we  not  have  a  blind 
Absolute,  blind  by  very  reason  of  the  superlative  radiance 
of  a  knowledge  which  must  be  unreflectingly  immediate? 
It  maybe  that  we  should,  but  there  is  an  alternative;  for 
there  might  be  a  type  of  immediate  knowing  which  is  not 
mere  likeness  of  insensate  fact,  but  is  only  to  be  described 
as  insight.  We  have  inklings  of  it  in  our  own  finite  experi- 
ence, and  we  do  not  find  it  inconsistent  with  self-realization. 
And  if  it  indeed  exists  as  the  final  luminous  self-sufficiency 
of  knowledge,  it  might  give  us  metaphysical  ease. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

TRUTH    AND    ITS    CRITERIA 

36.  At  the  beginning  of  this  essay  it  was  asserted  that 
the  desire  to  know  is  but  the  expression  of  those  needs  of 
human  nature  which  condition  the  exercise  of  human  activ- 
ities and  occasion  the  higher  evolution  of  man.  It  is  a  task 
yet  to  be  performed  to  define  more  precisely  what  is  meant 
by  these  needs,  and  especially  what  is  meant  by  that  one 
which  demands  for  its  satisfaction  a  metaphysical  explana- 
tion of  the  universe.  To  this  task  our  attention  is  now  ad- 
dressed. 

It  should  be  noted,  first  of  all,  that  the  desire  to  know  is 
itself  a  psychical  fact,  and  the  need  of  which  it  is  the  expres- 
sion is  a  felt  need.  Whether  every  organic  need  is  at  some 
time  or  other  self-expressed  in  consciousness  is  not  certain ; 
but  it  is  certain  that  the  greater  part  of  them  are  so  ex- 
pressed, and  especially  is  such  expression  likely  to  occur 
with  the  more  complex  requirements  of  higher  organic  de- 
velopment. Indeed,  from  a  strictly  biological  point  of  view, 
the  one  function  of  consciousness  appears  to  be  to  give  ex- 
pression and  factuality  to  those  needs  for  complex  adapta- 
tion which  enable  evolution.  Accordingly  we  must  find  in 
the  psychical  history  of  man  the  real  reasons  for  his  intel- 
lectual, and  perhaps  physical,  requirements.  It  is  certain  at 
least,  of  the  physical,  that  we  cannot  understand  them  apart 
from  what  we  call  the  higher  needs  ;  but  it  may  very  well  be, 
also,  that  the  intellect  itself,  with  all  its  variegated  furnish- 
ings, is  only  an  interpretation  and  representation  of  a  physi- 
113]  "3 


r  j  4  THE  PR  OBLEM  OF  ME  TAP//  YSICS  [  x  r  4 

cal  universe  to  which  we  are  bound  by  our  physical  necessi- 
ties. Such,  in  fact,  appears  to  be  the  meaning  read  into 
human  experience  by  those  cosmophiles  who,  in  their  awed 
contemplation  of  the  wonder  of  the  physical  universe,  can- 
not escape  a  certain  contempt  for  the  feebleness  of  human 
life  and  the  paltriness  of  the  soul  and  its  desires.  Yet  if  it 
be  shown,  as  seems  inevitable,  that  the  cosmos  itself  is  un- 
derstood only  in  the  language  of  those  desires,  and  that,  so 
far  as  we  can  know,  it  exists  only  as  their  reason, — or,  if  we 
choose  to  put  it  so,  the  desires  exist  only  as  the  reflection  of 
the  cosmos, — it  is  incontrovertibly  sure  that  we  must  con- 
ceive the  world  to  be  rational  and  rational  in  the  same  sense 
as  human  experience.  Indeed,  this  is  tautology, — for  what 
we  mean  by  rationality  is  nothing  more  than  the  final  reasons 
which  we  are  forced  to  give  for  our  experience,  and  these, 
as  is  just  said,  must  be  sought  in  the  history  of  the  origin 
and  satisfaction  of  our  organic  needs. 

That  this  argument,  or  explanation,  is  tautologous  does 
not  militate  against  its  vitality  and  force.  For  in  last  resort 
every  argument  must  be  tautologous ;  that  is  to  say,  every 
argument  must  be  designation  of  some  known  fact,  an  ap- 
peal to  the  immediate  experience  which  alone  can  make  it 
comprehensible.  Human  experience  is  thus  an  argumentum 
ad  hominem  for  the  rationality  of  the  universe ;  it  is  the 
world's  argument  for  its  own  sanity,  and  is  clinching  just  be- 
cause we  have  formed  a  concept  of  rationality  and  under- 
stand what  we  mean  by  it.  Literally  man  must  be  a  reflec- 
tion and  an  image  of  the  world  which  has  created  him,  or  at 
least  of  that  part  of  the  world  concerned  in  his  creation.  If 
we  reject  solipsism,  as  we  all  do,  we  can  find  in  the  world 
that  exists  beyond  the  boundaries  of  our  experience  nothing 
that  is  not  contained  within  that  experience ;  and  again  the 
only  rationality  that  we  can  find  within  experience  itself 
must  be  the  reason  and  rationality  of  the  mould  in  which  it 


!  ,  5n  TRUTH  AND  ITS  CRITERIA  \  \  5 

is  cast.  It  may  be  that  this  argument  is  of  a  piece  with 
Anselm's,  but  it  furnishes  the  sense  in  which  the  Anselmic 
reasoning  is  valid. 

Any  interpretation  of  the  need  for  metaphysical  explana- 
tion can  be  rendered  intelligible  only  with  reference  and  re- 
lation to  more  immediate  and  practical  needs.  At  the  basis 
of  all  are  those  physical  and  physiological  requirements  for 
sense-perceptions  and  the  exercise  of  functional  activities. 
These  requirements  may  not  be  consciously  felt,  or  are  felt 
only  in  the  lack  of  timely  satisfaction ;  but  this  fact  alone 
cannot  serve  to  distinguish  them  from  requirements  which 
we  are  accustomed  to  call  ideal  and  higher.  Roughly  the 
two  types  may  be  described  as  needs  for  immediate  and 
needs  for  ideal  experience,  though  this,  again,  is  not  accurate, 
for  at  the  last  all  needs  require  satisfaction  in  some  form  of 
immediate  experience.  We  may  best  say  that  there  is, 
first,  a  need  for  realization,  whether  it  be  the  mere  satisfac- 
tion of  the  demands  of  the  physical  organism  or  the  attain- 
ment of  that  which  is  ideally  held  before  the  mind  as  the 
object  of  desire ;  and,  second,  a  need  for  truth,  and  this  is 
the  need  for  knowledge  or  insight  which  ordinarily  we 
characterize  as  the  intellectual  need. 

The  practical  nature  of  the  need  for  truth,  and  the  causes 
which  led  to  its  generation  and  development,  cannot  fail  to 
be  seen  when  we  come  to  consider  the  function  of  repre- 
sentative knowledge.  For  it  is  by  means  of  such  knowledge 
that  that  indefinite  expansion  of  experience  in  potentia  which 
has  given  man  his  vast  superiority  in  the  animal  world  has 
been  enabled.  It  is  this  which  gives  rise  to  generalization, 
to  the  perception  and  apperception  of  the  more  complex 
unities  of  experience,  to  identification  of  the  persistent  in 
change  and  cognition  of  the  stable  and  reliable,  and  finally 
to  foreknowledge  and  prediction,  permitting  preparation  for 
what  is  to  come. 


1 1 6  THE  PROBLEM  OF  ME TA PHYSICS  [  x  T  6 

But  the  very  fact  that  the  desire  for  knowledge  and  truth 
is  created  by  our  need  serves  to  limit  the  knowledge  attained 
to  that  which  satisfies  the  need.  It  is  true  that  the  desire 
must  always  run  a  little  ahead  of  its  possible  satisfaction. 
There  must  be  a  perpetual  seeking  for  more  than  we  can 
attain.  Aspiration  is  the  motif 'of  evolution.  But  the  need 
must  not  be  too  great,  we  must  not  reach  out  too  passion- 
ately for  that  which  is  far  beyond,  lest  the  desire  defeat  its 
own  end  and  instead  of  growing  into  attainment  we  perish 
of  despair.  And  so  it  is  fair  to  say  that  all  our  knowledge 
and  even  that  which  we  wish  to  know,  the  truth  we  seek,  is 
determined  by  but  a  little  fraction  of  the  universe  which  has 
created  us.  We  dwell  within  a  little  islet  of  fact,  and  so  long 
as  we  can  find  it  harmonious  in  form  and  color  and  seem- 
ingly ruled  by  reason,  we  are  very  well  content.  What  is  of 
interest  metaphysically  is  that  we  know  it  to  be  an  islet  and 
not  the  whole  world,  and  again  that  we  desire  to  know  what 
it  means  in  the  plan  and  geography  of  that  whole  world. 
This  is  our  desire  for  metaphysical  truth — a  desire  to  know 
what  our  island  means  for  us,  what  its  purpose  and  end. 
That  the  meaning  must  be  sought  in  the  desire,  the  truth  in 
its  anticipation,  is  not  paradoxical;  for  this  is  the  case  with 
all  our  meanings  and  all  our  truths.  It  is  so  in  our  merely 
physical  genesis ;  it  can  hardly  be  conceived  to  be  otherwise 
in  our  intellectual  evolution.  The  demand  for  an  end,  or 
design,  is  both  the  essence  and  the  reason  of  the  desire,  and 
the  design  is  itself  contained  in  the  desire,  or  at  least  in  the 
causes  which  make  it  purposeful.  The  only  question  is  how 
far  truth  and  realization  need  or  do  correspond,  and  in  order 
to  answer  this  question  we  must  analyze  the  meaning  of 
truth. 

37.  Truth  has  various  meanings.  Amongst  these,  three 
stand  out  with  special  clearness.  First,  truth  is  often  identi- 
fied with  fact.     The  bare  fact,  we  say — meaning  simple  qual- 


I  i  7]  TRUTH  AND  ITS  CRITERIA  1 1  7 

ity  or  content  apart  from  any  implied  significance — is  the 
bare  truth  of  a  thing  or  event.  In  this  sense  we  find  the  true 
being  of  anything  in  the  elements  that  compose  it;  as,  for 
example,  the  true  being  of  water  is  as  a  combination  of  oxy- 
gen and  hydrogen,  the  simplest  qualities  into  which  we  can 
resolve  it, — or,  again,  the  whole  truth  of  an  illusion  we  ascribe 
to  the  subject's  mind,  meaning  that  it  lies  in  the  mere  fact  of 
the  illusion  itself.  But  we  must  discriminate  more  than  one 
meaning  of  '  fact.'  Most  precisely,  a  fact  is  a  simple,  unan- 
alyzed  qualitative  content  of  experience,  never  referring 
beyond  the  time  and  place  in  which  it  is  given.  It  is  the 
superlatively  concrete  esse  of  anything  whatever.  This  mean- 
ing is  often  extended  beyond  the  immediately  given,  so  that 
fact  comes  to  stand  for  reality  in  general.  Whatever  is  quali- 
tatively real,  in  that  case,  is  fact ;  and  nothing  but  fact  is 
real.  Fact  is  thus  made  the  objectified  as  well  as  the  imme- 
diate essence  of  things  and  comes  to  stand  for  that  which  is 
independent  of  knowledge,  or  at  least  not  dependent  upon 
its  immediacy  for  its  factuality.  Again,  fact  is  understood  as 
scientific  fact,  where  what  is  meant  is  scientific  description  of 
simple  qualities.  As  such  description  always  involves  enough 
theory  to  make  it  '  scientific,'  there  is  contained  in  it  quite 
as  much  theory  as  fact,  in  narrow  sense,  so  that  it  is  not 
unusual  to  encounter  an  appeal  to  facts  to  support  a  scien- 
tific theory  which  is  presupposed  and  embodied  in  the  evi- 
dence cited.  In  all  these  uses  fact  and  truth  are  apt  to  be 
used  synonymously :  the  bare  fact  is  the  mere  truth,  factual 
reality  is  the  true  reality,  and  scientific  fact  is  not  to  be  dis- 
tinguished from  scientific  truth. 

A  second  meaning  of  truth  is  that  which  understands  by 
the  truth  of  anything  its  true  description.  Here  truth  is 
never  identified  with  fact,  but  is  always  true  of  it.  In  other 
words,  'true'  is  an  adjective  of  knowledge  and  not  of  reality. 
And  the  truth  so  conceived  can  never  be  the  same  as  the 


I  I  8  THE  PROBLEM  OE  ME  TAPHYSICS  [  l  r  g 

reality  of  which  it  is  true,  neither  as  self-same  with  this  real- 
ity nor  as  its  exact  likeness ;  for  truth  which  is  only  true 
knowledge  must  be  symbolical  representation  of  reality,  dif- 
fering from  reality  as  whatever  exists  in  time  and  space  dif- 
fers from  what  is  ideal  and  universal.  Reality  is  what  is 
meant  by  truth,  it  is  what  truth  designates  or  represents ;  but 
the  representation,  the  truth  itself,  is  neither  more  nor  less 
than  the  meaning  of  reality.  By  this  I  mean  that  our  truth 
is  our  understanding  of  reality  as  it  affects  us.  The  reason 
that  we  try  to  identify  them,  make  truth  and  fact  coincide,  is 
that  the  only  meaning  reality  can  have  for  us  is  as  anticipa- 
tive  or  retrospective  realization  of  fact  of  some  sort.  But  the 
reality  and  the  fact  can  never  precisely  correspond  with  their 
truth  ;  ex  hypothesi  and  by  definition  they  differ  from  it,  since 
it  must  always  be  ideal. 

From  the  foregoing  we  readily  pass  to  the  third  meaning 
of  truth,  and  this  is  as  metaphysical  Truth,  which  is  the  same 
as  metaphysical  Fact.  We  have  already  seen  that  in  ultimate 
speculations  ontology  and  teleology  arrive  at  a  common 
object.  The  meaning  and  the  being  of  the  universe  cannot, 
in  last  resort,  be  distinguished ;  and  it  is  as  meaning  rather 
than  as  being  that  we  hypostatize  our  ordinary  conception 
of  truth  to  stand  for  an  ultimate  Truth  which  shall  be  the 
essence  of  an  ultimate  Reality.  Our  truth  represents  our 
ideal  representation  of  passing  fact.  Again,  it  represents  our 
idealization,  or  anticipatory  representation,  of  fact  that  is  to 
be  or  may  be,  and  consequently  it  comes  to  stand  for  what 
we  hold  to  be  best  worth  while  and  what  we  hope  for. 
Hence,  when  we  come  to  consider  the  whole  universe  which 
must  contain  in  itself  the  determination  of  our  destinies,  it  is 
with  reference  to  these  destinies  and  as  the  expression  of  our 
hope  that  we  appeal  to  the  world's  Truth  as  somehow  the 
better  part.  But  philosophically  ultimate  Reality  or  Factual- 
ity  cannot  be  distinguished  from  its  meaning,  which  is  its 
motif,  which  is  its  Truth. 


II9"j  TRUTH  AND  ITS  CRITERIA  119 

38.  The  possibility  of  error  is  taken  by  Professor  Royce 
as  ground  for  an  inevitable  inference  of  the  existence  of  a 
truth  with  respect  to  which  the  error  is  error.1  An  error,  he 
argues,  can  only  exist  as  the  failure  of  the  erroneous  judg- 
ment to  correspond  to  some  real  fact  or  truth  which  is  meant 
by  it.  We  cannot  even  doubt  unless  there  is  some  reality 
upon  which  our  doubting  is  centered.  The  whole  fabric  of 
rational  thought  and  all  that  is  intelligible  in  common  ex- 
perience is  inwoven  with  the  inference  of  the  existence  of 
some  independent  and  necessary  truth  about  which  we  are 
liable  to  err.  The  erroneous  judgment  cannot  know  itself  as 
erroneous,  nor  in  itself  be  erroneous ;  its  error  lies  in  its  fail- 
ure to  express  the  whole  of  the  fact  which  is  its  object,  but 
this  failure  could  not  exist  unless  the  object  itself  existed. 

The  validity  of  this  argument  is  not  to  be  questioned.  It 
forever  silences  the  solipsist ;  for  although  he  need  not 
abandon  his  solipsism  as  a  matter  of  belief,  he  can  no  longer 
argue  about  it.  But  to  the  mind  of  Professor  Royce  our 
liability  to  error  not  only  compels  us  to  infer  reality  beyond 
our  experience,  but  it  also  reveals  something  of  the  nature 
of  that  reality.  The  fact  of  error,  he  says,  implies  the  ex- 
istence of  an  Omniscience  in  which  both  the  truth  and  the 
thought  which  fails  to  comprehend  it  must  be  present.  "  An 
error  is  an  incomplete  thought,  that  to  a  higher  thought 
which  includes  it  and  its  intended  object,  is  known  as  hav- 
ing failed  in  the  purpose  that  it  more  or  less  clearly  had,  and 
that  is  fully  realized  in  this  higher  thought.  And  without 
such  higher  inclusive  thought,  an  assertion  has  no  external 
object,  and  is  no  error."2 

If  it  were  to  be  maintained  that  with  the  existence  of  only 
such  a  dead  reality  as  the  materialists  posit,  or  indeed  with 
the  existence  of  mere  chaos,  there  still  might  be  a  failure  of 

1  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,  chap.  xi. 
5  Loc.  cit. 


I  20  THE  PROBLEM  OF  ME  TAPH  YSICS  [  1 20 

our  judgments  to  be  true  of  this  reality  and  so  error  would 
result,  doubtless  Professor  Royce  would  respond  that  such 
an  error  could  be  no  real  error  at  all.  There  would  be  no 
means  of  comparing  the  judgments  which  might  err  with  the 
realities  about  which  they  were  judged  true,  and  unless  such 
comparison  could  be  made,  that  is,  unless  the  judgment 
could  somewhere  be  seen  to  fail  of  its  object,  it  would  be 
nonsense  to  speak  of  either  truth  or  error.  Neither  can 
exist  except  as  judged.  But  the  erroneous  judgment  cannot 
know  itself  erroneous,  for  then  it  would  have  in  its  posses- 
sion that  the  lack  of  which  makes  it  erroneous ;  and  of 
course  dead  matter  cannot  know  or  judge  anything.  Con- 
sequently, if  there  be  error,  there  must  be  some  conscious- 
ness to  which  both  fact  and  fault  are  present,  and  by  which 
they  are  judged  fact  and  fault  with  respect  to  each  other. 
Of  course  such  a  consciousness  could  be  little  less  than 
omniscient, — certainly  it  must  be  eternally  alert. 

The  hypotheses  upon  which  this  argument  rests  are  that 
truth  and  error  can  exist  only  for  an  intelligence  which  per- 
ceives their  discrepancy,  and  that  the  error  and  its  truth 
must  exist  simultaneously.  Now  it  is  hardly  to  be  ques- 
tioned that  both  of  these  hypotheses  are  true,  and  the  argu- 
ment would  be  indubitably  valid  but  for  the  ambiguity 
inherent  in  the  conception  of  truth.  For  so  long  as  truth  is 
conceived  as  true  description  and  error  as  faulty  description, 
so  long  as  both  are  adjectives  of  knowledge,  it  is  plain 
enough  that  neither  can  exist  except  for  an  intelligence  of 
some  sort.  It  is  plain,  too,  that  truth  and  error  must  exist 
simultaneously,  for  neither  can  be  known  except  by  com- 
parison with  the  other  (even  truth  can  exist  only  as  triumph- 
ing over  suggested  false  alternatives  ;  to  judge  anything  true, 
we  must  first  have  at  least  pretended  to  doubt  it),  and  com- 
parison involves  the  simultaneous  presence  of  all  the  terms 
compared.     But  truth  sometimes  means  the  bare  fact,  and 


!  2  i  ]  TRUTH  AND  ITS  CRITERIA  £  2  I 

in  that  case  there  need  be  no  comparison  in  order  that  there 
may  be  error.  It  may  happen  that  the  error  will  never  be 
recognized — for  aught  we  know  the  molecular  theory  may 
be  quite  erroneous  and  yet  it  may  be  held  to  the  end  of 
human  days, — but  that  does  not  in  the  least  prevent  the 
failure  to  truly  depict  reality  which  is  the  occasion  of  the 
erroneous  judgment.  Possibly  Professor  Royce  would  say 
that  there  is  really  no  question  of  truth  and  error  involved, 
that  the  so  called  erroneous  judgment  cannot  be  false  to 
what  it  means  since  the  meaning  is  altogether  within  itself, 
that  the  real  fact  is  never  brought  into  consideration.  And 
this  must  be  granted  when  we  take  truth  and  error  to  be 
solely  adjectives  of  knowledge,  or  again  if  we  find  no  mean- 
ing of  a  judgment  beyond  its  ideal  content.  But  if  we  dis- 
tinguish, as  we  do  distinguish  (see  section  17),  the  reality  of 
what  is  meant  from  the  meaning  of  which  we  are  actually 
conscious,  if  we  infer  any  whatsoever  undetermined,  extra- 
experiential  beyond,  we  must  allow  for  error  in  all  the  judg- 
ments we  make  in  regard  to  it.  And  as  for  that,  the  inde- 
terminateness  itself  is  just  such  an  allowance,  for  we  cannot 
believe  that  the  fact  is  indeterminate. 

Apart  from  all  this,  however,  it  is  not  at  all  clear  how  the 
inclusive  Thought  which  Professor  Royce  raises  up  to  ac- 
count for  truth  and  error  can  account  for  our  truth  and  our 
error,  the  truth  and  error  which  we  recognize  as  such.  It 
helps  very  little  to  know  that  there  is  an  absolute  conscious- 
ness to  which  all  truth  and  error  are  present,  if  we  cannot 
rectify  our  judgments  by  means  of  this  knowledge.  To  know 
so  much  and  no  more  does  not  aid  us  in  the  avoidance  of 
error,  nor  tell  us  why  or  if  our  truth  is  true.  Professor 
Royce  has  shown  us  a  sure  escape  from  solipsism  and  per- 
haps glimpses  of  a  promised  land,  but  he  has  not  given  us 
the  clue  which  shall  lead  us  thither  nor  any  magic  touch- 
stone to  reveal  to  us  truth  from  error.     The  best  we  can  do 


1 2 2  THE  PR OBLEM  OF  ME TAPH YSICS  {\22 

is  to  rely  upon  experience  for  revelation.  That  this  reliance 
is  not  immediately  sure,  experience  itself  has  taught  us,  but 
it  is  all  we  have,  and  in  the  long  run  we  may  hope  to  win 
some  gleanings  of  stable  truth.  Still  it  is  evident  enough 
that  this  truth  must  always  be  relative,  never  absolute. 
Human  truth  and  error  exist  only  retrospectively.  That  is 
to  say,  having  experienced  or  imagined  somewhat,  we  judge 
it  to  be  true  or  false  according  as  it  is  corroborated  or  belied 
by  what  follows  in  its  train.  Consistency  with  experience  is 
our  one  test  of  validity.  But  experience  is  never  complete, 
it  is  always  subject  to  change,  and  our  facts  are  always  tenta- 
tive facts  liable  to  future  correction  and  modification.  Hence 
our  truth  can  never  be  perfect,  never  absolute ;  it  must 
always  be  relative,  human  truth.  The  foundation  for  our 
truth  and  error  is  the  compulsion  of  fact.  For  aught  we 
know  this  fact  may  be  a  sort  of  sham  reality,  our  world  a 
cosmic  jest,  yet  in  certain  of  its  primitive  forms  reality  be- 
sets us  with  a  persistent  iteration  that  will  not  permit  in  us 
any  margin  of  disbelief.  And  so  we  are  certain  of  some 
things,  while  not  even  the  most  strenuous  sceptic  has  suc- 
ceeded in  doubting  all.  As  time  passes  and  our  mental  apti- 
tudes become  ingrained  habits  of  thought  we  may  grow 
certain  of  other  things  and  yet  others,  and  thus  the  body  of 
our  truth  will  grow,  whether  any  of  it  be  really  true  or  not. 

Truth,  then,  for  us  must  always  be  uncertain  and  relative. 
We  may  feel  sure  that  there  is  a  fixed  and  immutable  Truth, 
the  Fact  of  an  ultimate  Reality,  but  we  realize  that  it  can 
never  be  ours.  All  we  can  hope  for  is  that  our  truth  will 
become  more  and  more  like  this  final  Truth,  grow  into  and 
approximate  it,  so  that  eventually  we  may  learn  so  much  of 
its  nature  as  will  serve  to  show  us  some  role  for  ourselves  in 
the  world-play  which  shall  seem  to  us  worth  while.  And 
therein  lies  the  useful  purpose  of  philosophy  and  the  value 
and  dignity  of  its  task. 


!  2  3  ]  TR  UTH  AND  ITS  CRITERIA  \  2  3 

39.  But  we  must  have  tests  and  criteria,  rules  according 
to  which  we  may  select  from  the  puzzling  variety  experience 
affords,  the  proper  material  for  the  building  of  our  house  of 
truth.  Such  criteria  are  furnished  us  by  the  categories  of 
our  thought ;  we  can  only  think  as  we  can,  truth  can  be  true 
to  us  only  as  it  seems  true,  final  seeming  is  its  final  test. 
But  final  seeming  is  not  in  itself  a  selecting  agent.  All  it 
does  for  us  is  to  limit  the  range  of  our  choice  and  determine 
that  our  truth  must  lie  wholly  within  the  limits  of  what  is 
given.  It  may  ratify,  and  indeed  it  alone  can  ratify,  a  selec- 
tion offered ;  but  there  are  other  principles  which  govern 
selection.  The  foremost  modes  of  the  selection  of  truth  are 
its  natural  and  its  logical  selection.  By  its  natural  selection 
I  mean  the  formation  of  representations  of  facts  whose  per- 
sistency or  iteration  in  experience  forces  us  to  recognize 
them  as  constant,  and  so  true.  The  truth  of  the  permanent 
and  of  the  universal  is  thus  established.  By  logical  selection 
I  mean  that  selection  by  elimination  of  alternatives  which 
results  from  comparison  of  representations  of  simple  fact; 
that  is,  the  selection  of  truth  by  application  of  the  law  of 
contradiction.  Natural  selection  is  positive  in  method,  log- 
ical selection  is  negative ;  the  one  is  determined  by  iterated 
identities,  the  other  by  denial  of  opposites. 

Contradiction  always  appears  in  assertions  about  facts ; 
never  in  the  facts  themselves  ;  facts  per  se  cannot  be  contra- 
dictory. The  principle  of  contradiction  affirms  of  any  pro- 
position which  is  true  of  facts  that  its  negative  cannot  be 
true  at  the  same  time,  or  that  a  thing  cannot  at  once  be  ex- 
istent and  non-existent.  Now  such  an  affirmation  is  signifi- 
cant only  in  the  province  of  representative  knowledge,  since 
in  immediate  knowledge  the  fact  itself  is  given.  Any  appli- 
cation of  the  law  or  any  perception  of  contradiction  involves 
three  processes.  First,  an  abstraction  from  the  fact  and  an 
ideal  representation  of  its  truth  together  with  its  contradic- 


1 24  THE  PROBLEM  OF  ME TAPHYSICS  [  1 24 

tion.  Second,  a  comparison  of  these  representations  and  an 
effort  to  conceive  them  as  coexistent  in  time.  Third,  a  judg- 
ment of  the  failure  of  this  effort,  and  with  this,  if  the  case  is 
actual,  an  affirmation  of  the  truth  of  the  true  alternative  (its 
accuracy  as  representation  of  the  fact)  at  the  expense  of  its 
opposite.  In  all  this  the  question  at  issue  is,  What  is  the 
truth  about  the  fact?  And  it  is  in  the  alternative  sugges- 
tions that  offer  themselves  as  candidates  for  truth  that  the 
contradiction  arises. 

The  same  characteristics  may  be  restated  in  a  considera- 
tion of  contrariety.  The  comparison  of  contraries  is  in  every 
case  an  ideal  comparison,  and  the  perception  of  the  truth  of 
one  of  the  opposing  conceptions  is  the  judgment  that  it  is 
true  description  or  representation  of  a  circumscribed  fact. 
What  contradiction  and  contrariety  both  resolve  into  is  a 
process  of  definition  by  elimination.  Such  a  thing  as  a  real 
contradiction  or  a  real  contrariety  could  not  exist,  for  that 
would  be  to  assert  that  some  reality  could  both  be  and  not 
be,  or  be  black  and  white  in  the  same  way  and  at  the  same 
time.  The  reason  for  this  is  that  we  have  chosen  to  define 
being  as  that  which  excludes  non-being  and  whiteness  as  that 
which  excludes  blackness.  In  last  resort,  no  fact  can  be  any- 
thing except  just  what  it  is  and  just  as  it  is  in  every  particu- 
lar. For  us  this  must  mean  just  what  it  seems  to  us  and 
just  as  it  seems  to  us  in  final  seeming.  This  is  our  ultimate 
gauge  of  reality.  The  only  reason  why  a  question  of  oppo- 
sition ever  arises  is  that  we  cannot  retain  facts  just  as  they 
are,  but  are  forced  to  abstract  from  them  and  idealize  them. 
These  abstractions  and  idealizations  (substance  of  all  our 
truth)  are  such  feeble  reincarnations  of  fact  that  error  is 
bound  to  result  from  their  manipulation.  It  is  in  guarding 
against  such  error,  by  means  of  eliminative  definition,  that 
the  conflicts  of  mutually  exclusive  and  opposite  representa- 
tions serve  us. 


12e"j  TRUTH  AND  ITS  CRITERIA  12$ 

40.  The  foregoing  is  sufficiently  trite,  but  it  may  furnish  a 
text  for  a  transitory  recurrence  to  the  doctrines  of  Mr. 
Bradley.  The  most  incomprehensible  feature  of  Appearance 
and  Reality  is  its  assumption  of  the  validity  of  the  principle 
of  contradiction  while  condemning  as  mere  appearance  all 
that  makes  that  principle  intelligible.  Whether  there  is  any 
absolute  reality  or  not,  on  Mr.  Bradley's  own  hypothesis,  the 
whole  fabric  of  our  experience  is  warp  and  woof,  that  unreal 
real  aspect  of  the  universe  which  he  styles  "appearance." 
Consequently  it  is  only  as  dealing  with  appearances  that 
contradiction  and  contrariety  have  any  meaning  or  validity. 
Appearances  are  the  facts  in  the  description  of  which  opposi- 
tions may  occur,  and  they  themselves  must  furnish  the  cor- 
rection of  false  alternatives.  Our  truth,  and  our  error  as 
well,  can  only  be  truth  and  error  about  appearances  (if  we 
stick  to  Mr.  Bradley's  term).  But  appearances  themselves 
(that  is,  the  fact  of  our  experience)  cannot  in  any  sense  be 
in  opposition  to  one  another.  They  furnish  the  test  of  oppo- 
sition and  the  test  of  truth.  It  is  conceivable  that  all  our 
knowledge  about  our  apparent  reality  might  be  shown  to  be 
false  and  contradictory;  but  the  proof  of  the  falsity  could  be 
obtained  only  by  an  appeal  to  the  apparent  reality  itself, 
those  very  appearances  which  our  author  condemns  as  self- 
contradictory.  On  any  other  hypothesis,  there  could  be  no 
valid  inferences  from  the  fact  of  contradiction  ;  contradiction 
itself  could  be  only  falsely  apparent. 

A  ready  illustration  is  furnished  by  Mr.  Bradley's  proof 
that  space  is  self-contradictory,  hence  mere  appearance.  He 
does  this  by  showing  that  space  must  be  and  cannot  be  either 
infinitely  divisible  or  indivisible.  But  neither  of  these  terms 
has  any  meaning  except  upon  a  presupposition  of  the  exist- 
ence of  space  itself.  Space  could  be  divisible  or  indivisible 
only  in  space.  We  cannot  talk  about  its  divisibility  or  indi- 
visibility except  as  spatial  divisibility  and  indivisibility.     It 


!  2  6  THE  PR  OBLEM  OF  ME  TAPH  YSICS  [  j  2  6 

may  very  likely  be  that  infinitely  divisible  space  (if  such 
exists)  is  not  the  same  as  indivisible  space  (if  this  exists), 
but  that  is  no  reason  for  denying  the  existence  or  reality  of 
any  space  whatever.  Certainly,  if  our  talk  means  anything, 
some  sort  of  space  must  exist.  A  similar  argument  is  used 
to  prove  the  falsity  of  time.  Time,  we  are  told,  must  be 
and  cannot  be  composed  of  atomic  nows.  Here  the  blunder 
is  repeated,  for  we  cannot  conceive  any  division  of  time  ex- 
cept as  it  is  divided  in  time.  The  argument  has  no  meaning 
whatever,  it  is  bald  nonsense,  if  time  is  not  real.  But  the 
attempt  involves  an  even  more  egregious  petitio  principii. 
The  very  essence  of  contradiction  is  as  failure  to  identify 
objects  in  time.  Facts  not  temporally  coexistent  cannot  be 
conceived  as  contradictory.  If  time  is  not  real  no  one  of 
the  arguments  which  Mr.  Bradley  offers  to  prove  the  unreal- 
ity of  the  world  of  appearances  is  valid.  All  of  them  rely 
for  their  force  upon  the  application  of  the  law  of  identity; 
but  the  validity  of  this  law  is  itself  dependent  upon  those 
very  temporal  relations  which  he  is  at  so  much  pains  to  con- 
demn as  false.  The  difficulties  Mr.  Bradley  points  out  are 
not  in  the  least  to  be  doubted,  but  they  are  all  difficulties  in 
our  representation  of  facts,  not  in  the  facts  themselves.  It  is 
a  bit  absurd  to  find  in  our  own  conceptual  shortcomings 
proof  of  the  falsity  and  unreality  of  all  that  makes  truth  and 
reality  in  any  sense  intelligible  to  us. 

41.  Mr.  Spencer's  measure  of  truth  by  conceivability,  or 
rather  by  the  inconceivability  of  opposite  and  rejected  alter- 
natives, is  only  the  psychological  expression  of  the  principle 
of  contradiction.  Whenever  a  contradictory  alternative  is 
judged  untrue,  it  is  so  judged  solely  because  it  cannot  be 
made  to  seem  true,  it  is  inconceivable  as  a  true  account  of 
the  fact  which  it  purports  to  describe.  The  mutual  exclu- 
sion of  contradictories  and  contraries  is  only  the  form  of  the 
limitation  of  our  conceptual  powers.    The  significance  of  the 


I2--|  TRUTH  AND  ITS  CRITERIA  127 

test  of  conceivability  has  already  been  discussed  in  connec- 
tion with  the  meaning  of  possibility  (see  section  17)  and  it 
is  unnecessary  to  repeat.  But  of  interest  here  is  the  fact 
clearly  brought  out  in  this  test  that  all  our  criteria  of  truth 
ultimately  resolve  into  appeal  to  conceptual  impotence. 
Natural  selection  of  truth,  earlier  denned,  is  determined  by 
that  necessity  of  fact,  that  it  be  what  it  is,  or  that  its  truth  be 
what  it  seems  to  us  to  be.  Logical  selection  of  truth  is 
necessitated  by  the  forms  of  our  thought  and  the  nature  of 
our  mental  furnishings.  The  first  results  from  the  compul- 
sion of  the  empirical  given,  in  Kantian  sense ;  the  second 
from  that  of  the  a  priori  mould  of  all  our  experience. 

But  we  are  not  invulnerably  imprisoned  within  the  world 
of  immediacy  if  we  take  this  to  mean  mere  quality.  The 
very  fact  that  we  feel  constraint  compels  us  to  infer  a  con- 
straining ground,  whether  it  be  brute  matter  enweaving  us  in 
hopeless  toils  or  a  purpose  moulding  us  to  its  end.  The 
world  is  not  governed  by  our  wish  or  whim.  Our  world,  we 
call  it,  but  the  possessive  is  not  one  of  mastery.  The  world's 
force  is  something  stronger  than  we  can  gauge,  but  we  feel 
it,  all  our  helplessness  and  frailty  in  the  millings  of  fate,  and 
because  we  feel  it  so  keenly  we  cannot  doubt  its  reality. 
What  is  its  meaning  for  human  destiny,  whither  it  is  hurry- 
ing us,  we  can  only  guess.  But  we  know  that  this  meaning 
must  be  found,  if  at  all,  within  the  limits  of  experience.  To 
discover  it  is  the  whole  office  and  function  of  knowledge,  the 
whole  problem  of  science  and  philosophy.  True,  we  are 
concerned  to  see  but  a  little  way  ahead,  to  find  merest  frag- 
ments of  the  Truth  which  is  our  vague  ideal;  yet  we  always 
are  concerned  for  a  little  light,  a  little  truth,  beyond  what  is 
in  our  ken.  And  so  it  is  that  the  real  spring  of  our  mental 
evolution  is  perpetual  seeking,  and  seeking,  too,  is  the  motive 
of  our  life. 

42.  The  theme  of  this  essay  and  its  aim  is  the  definition 


!  2  8  THE  PR  OBLEM  OF  ME  TAPH  YSICS  [  \  2  8 

of  the  nature  of  metaphysical  explanation.  What  constitutes 
such  explanation?  What  is  the  problem  that  gives  rise  to 
it  and  what  the  efficacy  of  the  solution?  In  the  discussions 
of  what  we  must  conceive  our  need  to  be,  and  our  knowl- 
edge, and  our  truth,  and  in  the  analysis  of  the  character  of 
any  explanation  whatever,  I  have  endeavored  to  define  the 
metaphysical  problem  and  to  forecast,  if  vaguely,  the  form 
which  its  satisfying  solution  must  assume.  The  problem  it- 
self may  be  variously  stated:  it  may  be  a  quest  for  the 
essence  of  things,  or  for  a  reality  within  things  themselves, 
or  for  their  truth.  But  in  every  case  the  real  object  of  the 
inquiry  is  the  discovery  of  a  ground  or  raison  d'etre  which 
shall  seem  to  us  a  sufficient  reason  why  reality  is  what  it  is. 
Such  a  ground,  it  has  been  held,  can  only  be  shown  to  be 
satisfying  when  it  embodies  a  motive  or  a  purpose  intelli- 
gible to  us  in  terms  of  our  motives  and  our  purposes.  It  is 
only  as  revealing  design  that  we  consider  any  action  to  be 
reasonable,  a*nd  we  cannot,  therefore,  find  reason  in  the  world- 
movement  except  it  be  shown  to  have  design.  The  problem 
of  metaphysics  is  thus  par  excellence  the  problem  of  teleology. 
It  might  properly  be  termed  the  problem  of  ontology  too,  if 
our  object  were  to  find  the  meaning  of  the  universe  for 
itself,  since  that  meaning  could  not  possibly  exist  elsewhere 
than  within  the  being  of  the  whole.  But  it  is  quite  useless 
for  us  to  hope  to  know  any  such  meaning,  and  indeed, 
knowledge  of  it  is  undesirable.  What  we  wish  to  know  and 
need  to  know  is  the  meaning  of  our  world  and  of  our  life. 
In  this  narrower  province  of  human  world  and  human  mean- 
ing the  science  of  teleology  must  be  distinct  from  that  of 
ontology ;  for  we  may  conceive  any  description  of  the  flow 
of  phenomenal  fact  to  be  an  answer  to  the  ontological  query, 
and  in  sooth,  any  designation  of  fact  to  be  an  ontological 
account  of  it,  so  far  forth.  But  a  teleological  account  must 
show  in  that  fact  a  meaning  which  shall  be  for  us  its  suffici- 
ent reason  and  its  truth.     It  must  interpret  our  world  for  us. 


I29]  TRUTH  AND  ITS  CRITERIA  12g 

If  we  ask  more  intimately  within  what  limits  and  in  what 
modes  this  interpretation  which  is  to  be  our  final  explanation 
can  find  place,  certain  of  them  we  can  set  and  describe.  Its 
intelligibility,  we  can  say,  must  be  in  terms  of  qualities  and 
facts  of  which  we  have  immediate  experience.  All  that  the 
world  can  be  or  mean  for  us  is  somewhat  similiform  with  the 
seemings  upon  which  our  ultimate  convictions  rest,  and  out 
of  which  our  ideals  are  constructed.  We  cannot  say  that 
nothing  can  be  which  is  not  experience,  but  we  can  say  that 
nothing  can  have  meaning  for  us  which  is  not  experience. 
And  further  we  can  say  that  nothing  can  have  a  sufficient 
and  adequate  reason  which  is  not  interpreted  to  us  in  the 
language  of  our  motives  and  aspirations.  No  fact  can  be 
sufficient  unto  itself,  and  no  change  or  action  can  be  under- 
stood except  on  the  analogy  of  human  motive  and  intention. 
Hence  it  is  that  the  most  satisfactory  of  all  our  explanations 
of  the  world  are  animistic.  They  are  such  as  describe  nature 
in  the  one  language  we  can  grasp,  the  language  of  human 
emotion  and  impulse.  Hence,  too,  all  our  philosophy  and 
all  our  science  which  is  to  amount  to  anything  or  mean  any- 
thing must  be  anthropocentric  and  psychomorphic. 

If  yet  it  be  asked,  What  of  truth?  Is  not  all  this  but  a 
justification  of  fable  and  poetry  to  the  cost  of  that  austere 
mistress  in  whose  service  the  world's  best  genius  has  given 
all? — there  is  an  answer  and  a  hope.  And  the  answer  is, 
that  the  truth  which  we  seek  and  which  human  genius  has 
ever  really  served  is  the  very  spirit  of  fable  and  poetry.  And 
the  hope  is,  that  in  this  human  truth  which  we  strive  to  win 
may  indeed  be  found  the  form  and  feature  of  that  meta- 
physical, ultimate  Truth  concerning  which  we  can  never 
really  know.  And  there  is  reason  for  this  hope.  For  we 
find  in  the  human  soul  the  centre  of  reference  for  the  ex- 
planation of  all  in  our  world  that  is  or  can  be  made  intelli- 
gible to  us.     But  the  world  itself,  and  even  the  soul  itself 


t^0  THE  PROBLEM  OF  METAPHYSICS  [j^q 

compels  us  to  infer  the  existence  of  a  reality  beyond  the 
limits  of  our  experience  which  is  its  cause  and  ground.  We 
cannot  say  what  this  reality  is  or  what  its  Truth;  but  even 
in  conceiving  it  as  the  cause  of  our  world  we  seem  to  imply 
that  it  is  like  our  world.  To  be  sure,  the  cause  may  not  be 
like  its  effect,  nor  is  it  necessary  that  our  world  and  our  truth 
be  cast  in  the  mould  of  the  existence  that  gives  rise  to  them. 
And  yet,  if  we  do  not  believe  this,  there  is  nothing  left  but 
agnosticism  ;  while  if  we  assume  it  and  find  it  reasonable, 
therein  it  is  reasonable  and  a  ground  for  faith.  Moreover, 
we  can  defend  such  a  view  against  any  of  those  types  of 
explanation  which  tell  us  that  the  final  reality  is  some  quality 
or  qualities  of  our  experience  and  not  others,  that  it  is  matter 
or  motion  or  anything  of  the  sort.  For  such  views  always 
involve  contradiction,  whereas  the  view  which  is  here  taken 
to  be  reasonable,  even  if  it  cannot  be  proven  true,  cannot  be 
shown  to  be  contradictory  nor  in  any  sense  irrational. 

But  as  to  what  we  are  likely  to  know  and  what  is  to  be 
our  truth,  so  far  as  we  can  see  we  are  like  to  know  that 
which  will  be  to  our  avail  and  our  need.  In  the  end  need 
determines  knowledge.  This  is  perhaps  the  best  that  evolu- 
tion has  taught  us.  And  though  our  desires  always  run  a 
little  ahead  of  the  urgent  need, — so  as  to  give  a  motive  for 
evolution,  let  us  say, — still  the  urgency  follows  close.  And 
thus  we  grow  in  knowledge. 

"  Ye  know  on  earth  and  all  ye  need  to  know." 


VITA. 


THE  writer  was  born  in  Lincoln,  Nebraska,  April  9,  1873. 
In  1894  he  entered  the  University  of  Nebraska,  from  which 
institution,  in  1897,  he  received  the  degree  of  Bachelor  of 
Arts.  In  1898  he  was  appointed  Harrison  Fellow  in  Philo- 
sophy at  the  University  of  Pennsylvania,  and  was  re-ap- 
pointed to  the  same  position  in  1899.  During  the  year 
1900-1  he  was  University  Fellow  in  Philosophy  at  Columbia 
University,  where  he  completed  his  preparation  for  the 
doctorate.  For  his  first  instruction  and  inspiration  in  philos- 
ophy he  is  indebted  to  Prof.  H.  K.  Wolfe,  of  the  University 
of  Nebraska.  At  the  University  of  Pennsylvania  his  training 
in  this  field  was  continued  under  Prof.  George  S.  Fullerton, 
Prof.  Wm.  Romaine  Newbold,  and  Dr.  Edgar  A.  Singer; 
also  under  Dr.  Edmund  T.  Shanahan,  of  the  Catholic  Uni- 
versity at  Georgetown.  The  writer's  final  training  in  philos- 
ophy was  received  from  President  ( then  Professor)  Nicholas 
Murray  Butler  and  Prof.  James  H.  Hyslop  of  Columbia 
University.  To  all  these  teachers  he  is  under  lasting  debt 
of  gratitude. 

(13O 


reti  14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 


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Tel.  No.  642-3405 
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Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


NOV  2  9  107^  1  2 


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